Armoured
by ExGrim
Summary: On Hiatus. Not happy with how this story turned out so I may either redo it from the ground up or delete it as a failed experiment.
1. Chapter One, Exam Inspiration

**_ARMOURED._**

ARC ONE:

 ** _From Academy to Upstart_**

 **This is the one and only authors note for the entire first arc** , a primer of sorts to the story. All other chapters in the arc From Academy to Upstart will start without preamble, that said feel free to skip to the story, I know that I tend to tune out most author's notes myself so I wont hold it against you.

 **Armoured is an au story** , so there will be slight changes made to the history and to several characters. That makes it more interesting, I think. Both for you and for me, the writer. I hope so, at the least. I wont be rehashing each and every arc in the story and simply changing the jutsus being thrown around or cutting to the side characters every five seconds to show their reactions. You've already watched the anime so there wouldn't be anything to surprise or excite you if everything was the same with only a paper thin veneer of change. That said, the reason I'm writing this story is because I so enjoyed the original story so many things will remain constant. Naruto's upbeat, amusing nature willremain a constant for example, if somewhat altered to incorporate a bit of his dad, who was arguably the coolest character in the story.

If you've enjoyed smart Naruto stories, or stories where he has a different skillset than in the anime or manga you will enjoy this. Fuuinjutsu- yes. Puppeteering- yes. Cool techniques- yes. All of it with a twist to satiate my need to meddle with things that may be better off left alone. There will be no 'bashing', and I will do my best to avoid worn out, cheesy clichés. I am still a newbie writer so I don't know how great this is going to turn out, but if you've read fanfiction for a while this will be worth your time because I actually edit chapters so that the grammar and spelling wont send you into an apoplectic fit of rage.

This story is an experiment of sorts, my primary directive is to improve my skill as a writer and to do that I may experiment with the writing style from time to time but not at the expense of the storyline. I aim to have a simple, concise writing style that conveys depth and imagery without the need for flowery language and five-dollar words. I am a simple guy and I want my writing to reflect that. Naturally, your enjoyment of the story is also very important to me so don't expect this to be a completely self-indulgent work of fiction.

I wont whore out the story by giving you choices in pairing or what you feel should happen, the stories (or rather, writers) who do that tend to either fuck up a good thing, be fucked up from the get go or have writers skilled enough that they want that extra challenge and can pull it off. The latter is pretty rare, though. I wont be following most conventional Japanese honorifics, terms or technique names. I find that the mixing and matching of technique names in a story when using Japanese tends to make me somewhat confused. I am not very smart, so sticking to English as much as possible would be my best bet, I think. Unless I think that swapping a term out for an English one will detract from the story, there is no exact English equivalent or I forget I will be going with English equivalents.

I would love hearing from you directly, especially if you can give me advice to improve my writing and any obvious mistakes I've somehow missed while writing the story. Send me a PM or write a review asking me for feedback and I will be sure to get back to you. I'm always on the lookout for engaging discussion.

 **As I tried to upload this story most of my editing went out of whack and I attempted to patch it up before publishing.** Please forgive any mistakes that may have occured as a result.

 **}{.}{.}{**

A siren signalled the end of the academy. Five minutes later and high-pitched prepubescent voices were engaged in the sort of totally unimportant conversation only the childish could enjoy with such seriousness.

'Hey Mizuiro, you going to the chunin exams?'

'Of course! My dad ordered the tickets online as soon as they went online, we'll be in the fifth row back.'

'Ahh, you're so lucky. You'll be able to see everything from so up close. I'll be up in the stands. We wont be able to make out a thing from way back there!'

'You're lucky to have even gotten a ticket at all, they soldout in like two days. Besides, you'll be able to make out everything from the big tv screen in the stadium, so you don't need to be that up close anyways.'

'Its called a jumbotron, idiot.' Called a passing girl, who the two boys ignored completely.

'Its not the same! I might as well have watched one of the broadcasts from back home...' the boy whined

The same conversation was being hashed out by nearly all the kids slowly stampeding their way home, except for a few outcasts.

Outcasts like him. Naruto sat forlornly on the playground swing, idly noting the buzzes of laughter and discussion all around. The Chunin Exams had been the talk of the town for weeks, ever since the second stage had been illegally recorded and passed around for everyone to see. The fire-breathing, backflipping and flashy feats had captivated the population, making these final exams the most anticipated in history.

Gramps or one of his crotchety old advisors had caught on, and now instead of being a show reserved for the ultra-elite it was going to be broadcast to every television in the elemental nations.

Everyone was talking about it, and the lucky few headed to the arena were elevated to royal status in the academy. He wouldn't be going. The tickets were too expensive, even if he cut back to two bowls at Ichiraku's a week it wouldn't be anywhere close to enough. Damn, he really should have started saving. He didn't even have a television to watch the broadcast, and it wasn't as if he had any friends he could visit as an excuse to plop himself down infront of their tv.

But damned if he was going to sit around here feeling sorry for himself! So he took off, jumping from rooftops with thoughts of mischief on his mind. There was no cure for depression quite like orchestrating a cream pie in the face to an arrogant jerk.

Or, in todays case, a pair of jerks. He stopped and crept silently when he spotted them heading to the unofficial food district. When he got within earshot of the teenagers he paused to scope them out, they were two boys who had graduated from the academy a little while back and who had once called him a little brat. Well, if they wanted a brat he would be sure to deliver. Let it not be known that Naruto Uzumaki was above petty vengeance. He dropped down onto his hands and knees, years of experience in tailing prank prospects had instilled in him the importance of silence.

Crawling silently on the tiled roof, he listened intently to the two genin he was stalking until they paused. A red cloth, dyed and patterned to match the roof tiles he was now spying from, was bunched up in his right hand. An experiment of sorts, it had taken him more tries than he could recall to get the colour and pattern just right. And the thing wouldn't even work for all rooftops, because some people were just selfish enough to go with non-standard roofing.

'Hold up... Did you hear something just now?'

Acting quickly so that he wasn't spotted he threw the cloth over himself and stopped, face scrunched up in fear of discovery. The genin glanced over his hiding spot on the roof.

'I guess I was mistaken.'

The other slapped him upside the head. 'Ahh, Izumo. You've become all jumpy since the exams started. Man, you really need to calm down. Pausing at every sound. Who would want to follow us to lunch anyway?'

Izumo flattened his ruffled hair. 'Sorry. I suppose that crazy blonde girl got to me. But anyway, are you sure you don't want this?' he flourished a book at his friend who looked at him blankly

'My dad's a jounin and a slob. He probably has a dozen of those things lying about the house at all times. I don't need another.'

'Guess I'll just get rid of it then.' Izumo said, throwing the book into the alley behind himself with a careless backwards toss.

'Hey... I know I said I didn't want it but you shouldn't just go throwing it away like that. We could get in trouble if a civilian picks that up.'

The sound of a bin being knocked over caught their attention and just as suddenly there was a 'woosh!' and the pitter patter of running feet. When Izumo and Kotetsu looked for the book it would be long gone.

'Mission Success!' said Naruto as his apartment door closed. He hung his cloak- designated model red32 –on a peg, kicked off his sandals and ran into the kitchen. No one could tell him not to run around in his own apartment after all.

The book he had stolen from those oddball genin was put onto his kitchen counter and opened without preamble. Though, could it really be considered stealing if they had first tried to throw it away? He supposed it could be considered an anti-prank tax.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, there were no super cool jutsu to be found in the pages of Naruto's stolen book.

'Bingo?! What do old people games have to do with being a ninja?!'

The Konoha Central Stadium. It had undergone a rapid transformation in the past month. Literally overnight there had been another two thousand seats added by extending the convex sides another three metres turning the whole thing into some sort of giant earthen bowl. There were loads of benefits to having ninja who could literally command the elements, it seemed.

Gramps, known by most as their venerable Third Hokage, leader of the village and un-retired ninja badass extraordinaire, had surprised him with a ticket to the entire two day event. It was a heartfelt, tasteful gift and he had been really grateful. The best part of it all was that he had been given tickets way up in the third row- close enough that he'd been forced to sign a waiver. That meant he could proclaim his superiority to the entire class the day before. More than a few jealous glares had been shot at him.

The chumps would have to watch the thing at home, on the television. How very sad.He'd been so excited that he had raced pass the pop-up bazaar-esque attractions from merchants all over the lands and instead seated himself early. Or rather, he had been seated by a very moody genin on account of his metaphorical golden ticket. The poor amateur ninja must have drawn the short straw when it came time for mission assignments. Who took a ticket taker mission?

Lets see, we have three missions available. You guys could fight a gang of bandits to rescue a priestess, track down an escaped convict or make sure people pay for their tickets and are seated real comfortable at the Finals. So who wants what?

'Hey Naruto! I didn't know you were going to be here!' Spittle and crunching accompanied the comment, Chouji wasn't a fan of eating etiquette.

Both Shikimaru and Chouji seated themselves to his left, with the eternally lazy Shikimaru spacing out within seconds of dropping into his seat, as usual. The two, or maybe just Chouji now that he thought about it, had stocked up with two grocery bags of snacks. Maybe he shouldn't have been so hasty in getting to the stadium proper. That bag of crisps Chouji was palming looked pretty good right about now.

'Yo, Choji. Didn't I tell everyone about it yesterday?'

'Well, yeah but you say a lot of stuff. That doesn't make it true.'

He grimaced. Accusing the future hokage of being a liar, the balls on this guy... 'Well, I'm here aren't I? Gramps surprised me with a ticket a few days back. I'm glad I got to sit next to you guys, though. I thought I'd have to sit next to some boring old guy the whole day.'

A polite cough to his left revealed a gentleman in silken robes with greying hair. 'Ahh, I mean, I like old guys and stuff but most of them just talk about the good old days and other old people stuff like haemorrhoids and false teeth. That's really boring for us normal people, y'know.'

He distinctly heard the supposedly sleeping Shikimaru slap his hand to his head in disbelief. The old man was now blushing and he felt compelled to clarify.

'Umm, sorry, I don't mean to say that you're boring. There's always an exception to the rule. I mean, even Gramps has moments where his youthful awesomeness shines through.'

'... I'm only fourty-seven...' the man mumbled almostinaudibly.

Satisfied that he had completely settled the man's sensibilities Naruto nodded to himself and regarded his two kinda-sorta friends once more. 'So, you guys looking forward to the matches?'

Choji nodded. 'Yep, one of my cousins is actually going to be participating. The whole clan turned out to support them. Shikimaru actually has a cousin participating too, so they might actually have to face off in one of the later rounds.'

Shikimaru snorted for some unknown reason.

'Whoa. So if Choji's whole family is here does that mean yours turned up too, Shikimaru?'

'Nope. I'm the only guy in my clan here. Those lucky old bastards refused to come, they're all probably taking it easy back home. My mom threatened to kick me out of the house if I didn't go with Choji, troublesome old lady.'

'Figures that the rest of your clan would be as lazy as you. Maybe we should announce that the Nara clan has a life's just too much of a bother bloodline trait. Powers include the inability to stay awake for longer than five seconds.'

Choji burst out laughing and even Shikimaru seemed vaguely amused.

The morning passed with fun banter and awed cheerings, barring the third member of their party. Shikimaru preferred to alternate between staring up at the sky in a daze, napping until disturbed by loud noises and refusing all attempts to get involved in watching the fights.

'The next match is between the eighteen year old puppeteer Mahmoud from the sand village and sixteen year old Chewa Zeem, a martial arts and staff user from the cloud village. Will the competitors make their way to the arena floor?'

The announcer was a pretty redhead with a chunin vest. He hadn't paid much attention to her long winded introduction during the opening ceremonies but he remembered seeing her around town a few times. The balding middle-aged men demographic was paying real good attention to her though, and their wives weren't appreciating it all that much.

The announcement had caught his attention too,recalling something he had read in the 'bingo book' he turned to Shikamaru. 'Hey, Shikamaru, sand village has a lot of puppeteers right?'

'Yeah...' Shikamaru took a few moments to answer drearily, as if he were on the verge of falling asleep.

'Well, what do puppeteers do exactly? Don't they usually tell stories and stuff to little kids?'

'Troublesome. Why are asking me anyways?'

'Well, you're smart and stuff aren't you? Right Choji?' he asked

Choji nodded, not even pausing in his demolition of a party-sized bag of crisps. The Akimichi had three more packets but had been on the verge of attacking him when he had grabbed a handful. Stingy...

'You're about to see one fight for yourself. Take notes if you want to know that bad.' Shikimaru said, waving him off.

'Lazy ass. See if I don't get you back for this.' He saidShikamaru just sighed and lay back, head up to look at the clouds.

The Suna nin, garbed in white loosely fitting cloth that fluttered about in the breeze, made his way down to the ring accompanied by a life sized mannequin. The mannequin's face was all but featureless, only a wide unnerving smile and two beady eyeholes were carved in. Naruto shivered at the sight.

His opponent was similarly unnerved, his poorly hidden grimace easily visible on the massive television screen of the stadium, the commentator pointing it out with a laugh. Chewa didn't seem to be a pushover though, his physique was tall and muscular. The guy looked like a bear, his scruffy beard and chest hair ridiculous on someone his age. A huge wooden staff was tied to his back, more tree than stick to be fair. It would have been too thick for Naruto to wrap his hands around, even if his hands weren't a tiny bit smaller than average.

The fight was short but impressive. Chewa had been fast and strong, his staff wrecking fixtures and leaving cracks on the ground. The impressive staffwork had been bolstered by amazing acrobatics, twists, flips and the amazing feats of flexibility were even more amazing when coming from a guy so huge.

But the puppeteer had been even more amazing, and he couldn't help but recall that passage in the stupidly named Bingo Book about Sasori of the Red Sands, the kage killer. Projectile gadgets, poisonous devices, caltrops and an infinite assortment of otherwise deadly attachments could be built into a puppet and for someone who liked to tinker as much as he did it all just seemed perfect. And super cool!

After watching Mahmoud's menacing puppet unleash a flamethrower after dodging a vicious downswing it was all but carved in stone. He, Naruto Uzumaki, would be a puppeteer!

Just... you know... a lot cooler than all the other ones.

Mahmoud was nervous. Waiting with all the other chunin hopefuls on the second floor, he tried to relax by sipping on a juice bought – at a ridiculous price- from a vending machine. Curse the effect of supply and demand on his underwhelming earnings. He was still but a low-earning genin, the only genin from his village to make it through to the final round of the exam. His teammates didn't particularly like having their defeats shoved in their faces for the month they'd been forced to wait after the second exam so there was no one rooting for him up in the stands.He sighed. Frankly, he didn't want to stay here that much longer himself. His chances of making it through to the next round were slim to none now that he had been forced to show off all his tricks in the first round.

'Hey, hey, is something the matter scary-puppet guy?'

He waved a hand at the young boy in a pacifying gesture. 'No, don't worry about it.' Wait. How old was this kid anyway? 'Hey, kid. What are you doing here? This area is for competitors only, and I don't remember seeing you in the tournament.'

He had heard tales of Konoha's ridiculously young prodigies, it had been said that the copycat ninja had been made genin at five and chunin before ten, which was both amazing and really hard to believe. The kid laughed.

'The name is Naruto Uzumaki, future badass-iest hokage of all times. Hey, could you teach me how to use puppets like you do?' Naruto boisterously declared, completely ignoring his question.

He blinked. This kid was really direct.

'Ummm... I'm not really sure if I can do that. Arent your parents looking for you?' he said, hoping the kid could take a hint.

'I don't have any parents. I'm an orphan.'

Now we felt like a jackass. That was just great. 'Well... I guess I could show you a few things. I don't want to be distracted before my next fight so it cant take any longer than a few minutes, okay?'

'Really?! Thanks so much scary puppet guy- sensei!'

He lifted his right hand exaggeratedly, pointing his fingers outwards in the direction of his unnamed puppet . It rose slowly, theatrically and the blonde boy nearly squealed in excitement. He smiled. 'The most important thing about puppeteering is being able to control your puppet. It doesn't matter how great your puppet is if you cant control it well, understand?'

The boy nodded sagely. 'Yeah, yeah, I get that but how do you get it to move?'

'Chakra, of course. You make invisible strands of chakra with your fingers. They take a lifetime to master, but some people have even managed to control two puppets at the same time just by improving their skill with chakra strings.'

'Cool!' he heard the boy exclaim, almost picturing him thinking of controlling an army of puppets whilst cackling maniacally.

'The puppet itself is the next most important thing. It can be practically any size or shape you can reliably control, built in any way that allows for desired movement of parts.

'Desired movement?'

'Basically, if you want the arms to move a certain way you have to build them in so that they can move that way, the same goes for any other part you install. Gadgets or devices like a senbon-shooter need to be trigger activated so that you can operate it with your chakra strings.'

The boy nodded, practically bouncing with excitement and shot off. It wasn't technically legal for him to reveal any of the secrets of puppeteering, at least not while still an apprentice under Chiyo-sama and certainly not to a foreigner, but he hadn't really given away anything.

The art was a whole lot more complex than that two minute primer could cover, and the blonde haired kid, whilst cute, hadn't seemed to be all that smart. He was just a kid, after all.

'Quiet down, quiet down. Naruto! Didn't I just tell you to get back in your seat?!'

The usual morning scenes were being acted out in classroom 3A, with Iruka having to hold himself back from marching across the room and slapping Naruto upside the head, Naruto standing atop Shikamaru's desk and acting out one of the battles of the weekend's chunin fights as Shikimaru slept and Choji watched on in amusement with some of the other students.

The rest of the class spoke excitedly about the exam, though the aspiring Kunoichi preferred to pick apart Yugito Nii's tournament outfit instead of the fights.

Ten minutes of threats, rebuttals, shouting and thrown paper-weights later and the class had settled down.

'Now, I know we are all excited about last weekend's chunin finals-' he hurriedly continued before a bruised Naruto could butt in and send the class into another hyped-up series of discussions 'and thats why I approached Hokage-samawith a special proposal for all of you...'

'What? What is it Iruka-sensei?' asked Naruto, beaming

'The third year classes will be holding a joint mock chunin exam, complete with a survival trial, fighting tournament and tactical exam. The prize is the winners choice of either 750ryo or a private ninja lesson with an elite ANBU ninja!'

Pandemonium descended and Iruka grinned along, the excitement getting to him too. He had so much fun putting all of this together and he knew that all the students would benefit greatly from it all, the hokage had been mightily impressed by his detailed proposal. True, the prize wouldn't be all that great and the Third himself had offered up one of his ANBU for the cashprize alternative but the excitable students would probably have paid to get into something like this.

'The first round of the tournament will be starting next week Monday. Mizuki and I will be handing out agreement slips at the end of the day with more details. Make sure your guardians sign the bottom and that you bring it back to class by no later than Friday..' He added the last line for Naruto and Shikamaru in particular, giving them a pointed look 'Those of you who wont be participating will still haveregular classes together with the other third years who'll be sitting out. Mrs Shigure will be heading the classes.'

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Naruto Uzumaki liked tinkering. This was something that very few people knew, but it was true nonetheless. There was just something he found really interesting about taking something apart and making something else.

So that's what he did, pretty much all the time. Apart from when he was pranking those who deserved it- or those whose reactions he thought would be funny- he would tinker with electronics, scrap metal, wood, broken toys and any junk he could find. The old man had learnt his lesson after two television sets, four alarm clocks, a refridgerator, two microwaves and dozens of radios so Naruto had been forced to find a place to source tinker-material three months into his new hobby.

He'd found that at the Konoha Dump, a plot of smelly land situated on the outer edge of the village, far enough away from the living spaces so that it was never really thought about by the average population but close enough that there were a few scavengers who took to it on weekends to collect bits and pieces they could use for their little pet projects. Naruto had once tried to christen them 'scrapsaviours' but that had not caught on, partly because he wasn't liked much by any of them and partly because the inherent subversive, lonewolf behaviour of the majority of the would-be saviours completely rejected the notion of having to conform to group rules and standards.

Still, for a budding tinkerer like Naruto the dump was the no.1 supply store for all things bent metal, broken electronics and otherwise miscellaneous in nature. Hey, he was a growing boy and needed to save all his money for food, you know? Kiba could go to hell if he didn't believe it too. He was just a late bloomer!Clang! He deftly avoided the falling steel as the two-metre tall pile came undone when he tugged at a thick, twisting spring that must have been taken off a rusty old car. Dozens of piles of garbage were tipped throughout, some on top of each other until they had formed stink stacks over three times his height. He wasn't at all surprised, he would usually have to dodge a collapsing pile at least thrice for every trip he made to the dump, big as they were.There wasn't quite as much rubbish as there should have been, though, seeing as how the hidden leaf village was a village in name only. In recent years Konoha's population had exploded with immigrants from all over the continent,now the village's population rivalled that of the capital city.So, what gramps would do twice a year was hire three or four flame-technique specialists to come in and burn the trash until it was little more than a smoky smear. It probably wasn't the most elegant, efficient or even environmentally friendly way to do things- some scavengers protested against having the 'burning days' at all, but having once seen the event in person he couldn't deny that the sight was awe-inspiring.

The short-term nature of the piles meant that nobody gave much of a care as to its stability so everything was thrown haphazardly, which was hazardous for his health. He was the only person brave enough to grab at things among the more shifty piles-and it was definitely bravery, not stupidity as one of his less antagonistic fellow dump scavengers once theorized. Everyone else pretty much stuck to the large, immovable piles. Better for their health, they said.

Which meant that he had first dibs on great finds like this! The old spring was just what he had been looking for, and with a grin and exclamation of success he hurried back home to continue his project.

He kicked off his boots, he would wash the gunk off them later. Right now he was more interested in his pet project: creating his own ninja puppet.

It hung eerily from a makeshift line nailed into the wall using salvaged ninja wire and in blatant disregard to the landlord's contract. Right now it was pretty much all arms and torso, the head lay half-carved from a log found in the training grounds, a shaky menacing expression sprayed on the face.

Naruto smiled. A mechanism of his own design lay beside the incomplete head, waiting on him to finish up and attach to his super-cool puppet. He couldn't wait to get this thing up and working, it was going to be so much fun!

He had already put in several sleepless nights into this project, sometimes starting to carve as soon as he got back from the Ichiraku ramen stand for dinner and getting so lost in his work that he would only stop when the light of dawn came into the room. Until he had thrown up a curtain to stop all that, that was. Now he could sleep in peace and head to the academy after lunch if he felt like it.

The socket joints for the puppet had been difficult to figure out, an embarrassing trip to a kindergarten puppet show the only way he had been able to get it worked out. The parents hadn't wanted him there, but he hadn't cared to give in to their frowns and passive-aggressive comments.The non-cool puppeteer hadn't been very accommodating either so he had borrowed a freaky clown puppet on his way out. He hadn't gotten permission to borrow it, but he had handed it over to the ANBU that had pitched up at his place a few hours later without any arguments so he didn't have any guilt about it.


	2. Chapter Two, Mock Exam 1

It was the starting day of the mock chunin exam and Naruto was in class not a minute later than 7am, by far the earliest he had ever turned up to the academy. He had already paced his bedroom for nearly two hours after waking in the dead of night in anticipation, feeling too buzzed to go back to bed. This was going to be so cool!

Unfortunately, it turned out that waiting at the academy was no less frustrating than waiting at home, even with a few of his classmates turning up early too. They weren't the greatest conversation after all, so he was forced to resort to other methods of amusing himself.Methods that involved a bucket of water and a door just barely ajar.

Iruka always turned up promptly to class at exactly 7:45am, the same time he had turned up every day for as long as Naruto could remember, so there wasn't any chance of him pranking the wrong person if he timed it right.

The handle turned and he grinned in anticipation, anticipation that turned into terror when, at 7:44 the bucket of water intended for Iruka sploshed all over a tiny grey eyed girl. 'eep...' the girl squeaked, cheeks glowing red in embarrassment and not a little surprise.

His sensei turned up not fifteen seconds later.

'Naruto! You've gone too far this time!'

He had already pulled down the academy window and stuck his head out before Iruka just barely managed to foist his escape attempt by grabbing onto an orange pantleg.

'I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean for it to fall on her, honest! If you had just come on time--'

Iruka bopped him over the head 'So you wanted to get me instead? You think that'll get you off the hook?!'

'Ouch! It was just a little joke, and I had to sit here and do nothing for like, a whole hour!'

'Well, isn't that what you usually do all the time in class anyways?' Kiba, the third tallest kid in the class with a real big mouth and a stupid face decided to interject, probably trying to get him in even more trouble, the jerk.

'Shut up, dog breath!'

In the end he was forced to mop the entire class- twice- and help Iruka-sensei hand out a sheet of paper and a carved wooden thing-amajing to every student. He couldn'teven mess with Kiba by swapping his token with Shikamaru's, 'cause Iruka sensei swore to have him mopping the entire academy if he put one toe out of line for the rest of the day.

It wasn't an empty threat. He'd been forced to do worse before.

He plopped back into his seat with a huff of annoyance.

When he had finished handing the items out to everyone else in the class Iruka-sensei gave him his own slip of paper and token. There were three lines of kanji drawn on the sheet, personalised as each of the others were.

I was blessed with eyes that can see.

I secretly love a red fruit.

I am marked by the fan.

What the hell was this supposed to be? Blessed by eyes that can see? As far as he knew there were no blind academy students, so what was this all about? A riddle obviously, but what for?

'Every one of you has a riddle that will lead you to your partner for the exam, partners have been chosen at random so don't expect to go through the exam with your friend. When you kids become genin you'll have no choice in who your teammates will be so it's best if you get used to being on teams with people you may not know all that well.'

Ahh, so that was what the riddle was for. Naruto didn't know how he felt about being partnered with someone who was seemingly obsessed with strawberries. Were strawberries even fruit again? He slapped his head in realization. Of course strawberries were fruit! They definitely weren't vegetables, were they?!

'The talisman you hold is one part of a pair, each talisman is held by one half of the team. If you think you've figured out the riddle you'll just need to hold up the talisman against your partners and you'll progress to the next round. If you get it wrong though, the talisman will turn black and you'll be disqualified from participating in the latter rounds, so think carefully before making a move. You are allowed to ask anyone not participating in the tournament any questions you'd like, but if you ask one of your classmates or any of the other third year academy students that would mean an immediate disqualification. Dont think you'll get away with cheating either.'

He took the warning to heart. His sensei was some sort of rule-breaking detector, he always seemed to know if you were doing something you shouldn't.

'You have until 1pm to figure out the riddle and find your partner. When you find your partner you are to meet up infront of the playground out back. Good luck!'

Iruka smiled at everyone and walked out of the classroom.

Amusingly, the first person to make a move was the lazy Shikimaru, who stood up from his desk and walked non-plussed over to a contemplative Sakura.

'W-what? Do you want something?'

Instead of answering he slapped his talisman on the one on Sakura's desk. It glowed faintly and then... with a poof of smoke... turned into a single blue talisman with the number five embossed.

'You idiot! What do you think you were doing just coming over here and poking my talisman without my permission?!'

'You're my teammate. See?' he pointed at the bluetalisman 'It's not black. Im guessing this means we're supposed to be team five, or team Blue Five if the colour scheme differs on each set.'

Sakura slammed her fist on the table and Naruto winced. That girl had a mean, mean violent streak if the wrong buttons were pushed. 'Thats not the point! What if you had been wrong and got me kicked out of the tournament, huh?! What would Sasuke-chan think if I couldn't even pass the first round of the tournament? Dont you have any manners?!'

Shikimaru was entirely unfazed at Sakura's tone nor her raised fist and Naruto felt his respect rise several notches as a result 'Troublesome... Look, I'll be sleeping under the tree in the playground, okay? Just wake me up when we're supposed to meet with Iruka-sensei.'

'Hey!! I wasn't done speaking to you yet! Get back here!! We're supposed to get to know each other for the exam!'

Sakura trailed after him, getting more enraged at every disregarded line.

Poor Shikimaru. Naruto had a sweet spot for Sakura, it was true, what with her pretty pink hair, captivating green

eyes and other positively adjective-d features, but Sakura could be a bit of a harpy at times and Shikimaru was just the sort of person to set her screeching. Anyways, not his problem. He had a test to do and he wasn't stupid enough to think that the rest of them would be able to figure out the riddle as easily as Shikimaru did, so it was best if he got started trying to work it out as soon as possible.

Sx

He had relayed to the participating third year students- nearly two-hundred in total, thanks to the petering nature of academy student membership- to meet at training ground three, one of the many clearings around Konoha designated for the ninja population to metaphorically sharpen their skills and the one he had himself used back under his Jounin sensei along with Mizuki. Most were rather Spartan though, the elaborate obstacle courses and faux- environments of villages like Cloud were changed out for simple wooden training posts, trampled grass and trees.

The Konoha Civilian Council was notoriously Spartan in the funds allocated for ninja training, dozens of intelligent and well-meaning people had come forward through the decades with proposed programs and updated curriculums. All had, without fail, been shot down.

Relatively new divisions that he had considered joining before deciding on the academy such as the RD department had only been given life by executive actions taken by the various Hokage, each of them noted for starting their each branch dedicated to their own interests. Though the fourth hokage's division hadn't really gotten off the ground before his early passing.

There was still an hour left but most of his class had already made it, making him proud. He must have been doing something right when it came to their training. Though... not much headroom on their attitudes, seeing as how Sakura had dragged a sleeping Shikimaru to the training ground and Kiba had immediately tried getting into fights with students from the other third year classes.

He sighed. His only students who had yet to make it back were Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto Uzumaki. No doubt Naruto would have been struggling with the riddle, but the Uchiha heiress shouldn't have had any trouble figuring it out. He liked the kid more than he should, but let it not be said that a ten year old Naruto Uzumaki was the most... multi-faceted of people. He could only hope that Naruto wasn't doing anything stupid again.

'We made it!' Naruto exclaimed nearly an hour later, minutes before the cut off time. A sedate looking Sasuke

strolled behind calmly.

He didn't miss the glare shot at him by the ten year old Uchiha. Put out with her partner, no doubt.

That would probably be the last of them, then. He cleared his throat to call for attention.

'Your task is to survive two nights in the forest and collect at least one other token from another team, as you can guess that means at least half of you will fail this exam. Those who make it through will have the next task explained to them after presenting their tokens on Monday morning in this clearing. You aren't awarded any points for having more than the required number of tokens so there is no need to rush. I recommend that each of you first set up camp before attacking another team.'

Some of the kids seemed alarmed, maybe unnerved at the prospect of spending a weekend in the forest.

'Dont worry though, you may not know it but there will be several chunin and jounin keeping an eye on you throughout the entire exam to make sure you aren't in any real danger and that you behave appropriately, though you cant ask any of them for help completing the exam. If you wish to quit atany point simply call out loudly for a proctor and one of the assigned ninja will escort you home. Understand?'

Cue reserved nods of acknowledgement and accompanied mutterings.

'Good luck to all of you!'

SX

Sasuke held up a hand to signify stopping a few minutes after they had left Iruka-sensei and hopped down into a clearing. Wondering what the deal was he followed and dismounted his tree branch with decidedly less grace.'Whats up?' he said 'We have the others after us already?'

Iruka-sensei had recommended they first set up a base before going after another token. They had two days after all, and it was important they have a safe spot to sleep and cook before sundown. It would take time to set up traps and take safety measures to make sure they weren't attacked in their sleep. He wouldn't take it for granted that

everyone would follow the guidelines, though. Some kids might take advantage of the fact that they were setting up camp to attack another group unawares. He didn't trust that Kiba Inuzuka. Guy was a sly dog, Naruto wouldn't put it past someone like that to play unfairly.

'No. We will be parting ways here. You are a liability to me. Your skills- or lack of them- will only serve to slow me down. I won't be carrying dead weight through this test.'

His eyes widened in surprise. He had never really gotten along with Sasuke, never spoken to the girl even, but as a fellow orphan he'd figured they would understand each other. 'What are you saying?!'

'Just stay out of my way. I do things on my own, all you have to do is hide in a hole somewhere for the weekend and make sure you don't knock yourself out tripping over a rock or something.' Sasuke said coolly

He clenched his fists. This bitch... 'I wont be tripping over anything, stupid! I don't need you either, you'll see!'

'Hmmm.' She hummed dismissively and disappeared into the trees too fast for him to make out anything more than a blur.

He would show the arrogant bint. He could totally get another token all on his own! Could get them all if he wanted to! He was Naruto Uzumaki, future no.1 badass hokage! He would be the tallest, strongest, ninja-est hokage of them all, then Sasuke would be all like, 'Im sorry I ever doubted you hokage-sama. You are way, way, way better than me.'

Then she'd probably say 'hmm' or something.

Filled with righteous indignation he ran off at top speed, trying to best Sasuke. He had barely made it out of the clearing when his foot snagged on something and he tripped, ass over end thanks to his momentum, and rolled into a ditch. Looking about wildly he shot to his feet and dusted himself off, whistling nervously.

Looking back his eye twitched. He had tripped over a rock. 'Damn it...'

SX

Naruto grinned from the bushes.

After seven hours of silently waiting in these bushes itlooked like he would finally snag a token. A cave stayed fixed in his eyesight, the perfect place to set up camp. Or, it was. Before he had booby-trapped the place, that was.

'Mizuiro! Mizuiro! I found a spot to set up camp!'

Another boy, brown haired walked up calmly in his khakis. 'Great, Chishiro! Lets get it all set up and start a fire for supper. I'm starting to get hungry.'

'Yeah, me too.'

The class 3B duo wandered into the cave and he waited until he heard stumbling and surprised shouts before stepping out to survey the damage. The cave was shallow and still pretty well lit in the afternoon light so he could make out their annoyed glances. They were both hung upside down from their ankles, the snares he had set up as a primary obstacle working as planned. He needn't have even bothered with the other dozen or so traps, the simplest traps were usually the best in practice.

'Naruto, so it was you who did this. What do you want?'

Come on, wasn't it obvious? 'Why don't you hand over your token and I'll let you free.'

'No way!' said Chishiro, swinging about from his rope trying in vain to wriggle free, no doubt.

He grinned toothily 'Well, then you'll be staying up there for a while.'

Chishiro remained impassive until he started rifling through their dropped bags, pulling out two cans of beans and a loaf of baked bread. 'Hey... Thats ours.'

He took a great big bite and swallowed. 'Oh? Well the bread is really good. I wonder what else you have in here.'

Faced with the prospect of having their food disappear the strung-up boys changed their tune 'Okay, okay already! We'll tell you, just let us loose first!'

'Hey, I'm not stupid. You aren't coming down from there until that token is in my hands, got it?' Bah. It was amateur hour around here.

'Tch. Its in my back pocket.' Said Mizuiro

He took the token out of Mizuiro's khakis and inspectedit. Unlike his team token- that Sasuke had run off with!- it was green and had the number three imprinted. There was no point crying about lost tokens now though, he would just have to get more tokens on his own and show that bitch he could carry himself through this exam.

'Hey, let us down already you blonde idiot.'

'Nope.'

'Wh-what? Hey! We had a deal!'

Naruto ignored the shouts and curses until he had finished eating. Then, he walked over and started drawing on their faces. He was outnumbered, it would be real dumb for him to go to all the effort of setting up a snare like that only to have the token taken back after cutting the rope. Only when he finished his artwork did Naruto answer the raving Chishiro 'I'll loosen the ropes a bit. If you wiggle around for twenty minutes or so you'll get out, I'll be long gone by then though.'

'You bastard! I'll kill you when I get out of this!'

Yeah, right.

SX

He had made a grave mistake. After the high of pulling one over those dumb guys from 3B he had gotten sloppy and sprung a pathetic trap on the first marks he'd come across. He had chosen the wrong marks though, his surprise appearance had been completelyexpectedthereby nullifying the surprise factor. Shino Aburame, the guy who showed less skin than a nun and wore glasses indoors, had been teamed up with Kiba himself.

The two of them may have been the worst choice he could have made when it came to using his pranking abilities. Shino had somehow known he was around since he had come within hearing distance from their makeshift hideout and Kiba could apparently smell him coming from a mile away. Put appropriate dog joke here. Now he was running for what passed as life.

'You're not going anywhere, Naruto!'

Kiba was fast. Faster than he should have been, since he ran here on all fours. Human beings were bipedal, that's why toddlers didn't start of walking and progress to crawling after months of struggle. He supposed that Kiba must have had some really, really strange ancestors. Or maybe it was

another of those human cheat-code genetic mutations the politically correct called bloodline traits.

He pirouetted and stopped almost immediately. His new escape route had already been blocked off. Shino stood imperiously, oversized beige coat fluttering in the breeze. You come off really intimidating if no-one could see your eyes. It seemed there would be no way out of this and he tensed up, ready to put up a fight.

'Hah!' Kiba laughed 'You really chose the wrong guys to mess with, dumbass. You may as well quit the whole thing now already, no way is someone like you making it to the next round. Not even with that girl prodigy dragging your ass. You barely made it to this round!'

The laughter that followed clinched his decision to fight. He would slap the dog around for a bit to teach him a lesson.

'We should not taunt Naruto-san. Why? Because his teammate may be nearby and come to his aid.'

The dog-brained idiot waved Shino off and Naruto resisted growling in frustration. Damn that dark haired bitch for leaving him to deal with this crap on his own. 'Why don'tyou come and try for yourself, you stinky mutt?'

Kiba suddenly hunched over, as if in pain, and grew rabid. He couldn't explain it any better. Kiba's hair grew a few centimetres and jutted out every which way, his teeth grew longer and sharper, canines just barely jutting out of his mouth. His nails lengthened, then sharpened. It must have been a taijutsu technique of some sort, and he wasn't happy to admit, even if it was only to himself, that it was actually a pretty cool-looking techinique. He wouldn't be saying that aloud, though.

'What's that technique called? Rabies-no-Jutsu?' he said

Kiba growled, wild looking eyes staring furiously at him. 'You have a big mouth, deadlast. You'll be quiet after this, though.'

Then Kiba shot forward, hand swiping at him like a bear. He just barely dodged the swipe, claws tearing through his snagged jumpsuit with ease. He couldn't complain though, a fist was buried in his gut soon after, the strength behind it knocking some of the air from him. He recovered quickly though but could do nothing more than try his best to dodge the punches and kicks.

Naruto wasn't coming out of it clean, he'd already taken a cut to his face and a dozen body shots. There must have been a way out of this! He couldn't let Kiba beat him, he had only just gotten the token off those guys after spending nearly an entire day casing out that cave!

Think, think. He couldn't get his hands together to perform a replacement technique, he had just barely gotten the technique down a month back so he wasn't all that good with it yet. Kiba wasn't letting him fight back. He didn't have any jutsu, he hadn't set any traps and if he didn't have enough time to give a punch he wouldn't have enough time to draw a kunai and throw it.

Think. If he could just distract Kiba somehow, just get him distracted enough that he could launch a deciding blow he just might be able to get out of this yet. But what could he do?

He had it! Smirking, he took a shot to the face for his thoughts. 'Hey, Kiba?'

'What is it now? You giving up already?'

said Kiba, not pausing in his beatdown.

'Nope.' Then he proceeded to shoot the biggest, wettestshot of spit he had ever conceived straight into Kiba's disbelieving face.

'You-'

In that gap he had pulled his kunai and knocked it end first into the side of Kiba's head, forcing him to take a knee.

'Bastard!' Kiba roared. Naruto made to give another blow but paused when he felt another kunai, this one pressed to his neck.

'I believe that you are at a stalemate Naruto-san. You should hand over your token without any further delays. Why? Because you are outmatched and outnumbered.'

Before he could cry uncle someone he had never expected to see appeared, re-igniting his belief in karma. Sasuke had hopped down from the trees, kunai already drawn. For a minute she quietly surveyed the scene and both Kiba took in a breath, preparing himself for a trip to the infirmary. Sasuke was notoriously vicious during spars and training sessions back at the academy. Naruto grinned in satisfaction. Maybe Sasuke was good for something after all.

Then she snorted, and his stomach dropped. Without a word she had disappeared into the treeline once more, and Kiba decided to rub salt in his wounds. 'Hah! Even your teammate knows you're hopeless, you blonde runt. Now handover the token to Shino or else I'll do to you worse than a shot to the head.'

He had no choice. He swallowed his pride, fumbled about in his knapsack, and handed the green token over.

SX

The Monday morning that followed his stint in the training ground forest had a cheery air, the sun was out early, birds were chirping and he was sure that back in the village there were happy civilians smiling and greeting one another as they languidly made their way to their destinations. Probably no traffic either.

Naruto didn't share any of their cheer though, the lucky bastards.

He stumbled from the underbrush hair dirty, wild and stinking of sweat and dirt. He didn't care about his dishevelled appearance, all he wanted was something good to eat. Iruka was an asshole. They were a five minute walk away from Ichiraku's, close enough that he could smellthe boiling broth tantalising him in the wind all day yesterday, but he couldn't leave the forest to grab a bowl or twenty- not if he wanted to pass anyways.

So he had stuck through it, and now he was utterly miserable. And hungry.

'You actually made it here on your own, dobe? And here I was just about to go back in to grab you out of whatever hole you crept in.' Sasuke leaned up against a training post, smirking with her arms crossed over her chest.

'For your information, I managed to get another token all on my own even after you abandoned me with Shino and Kiba.' So saying he dropped a pink token to the ground and gave a smug look.

Sasuke didnt even pause. 'Wow. It took you two days to get two tokens? Thats really pathetic. Especially since you lost the first one. I decided to quit the first night in, we needed a third round after all. It would be boring otherwise.'

Then Sasuke dug her hands into both pockets and more than a dozentokens dropped to the floor. God, could anyone be more arrogant?

He pulled out a half finished can of disgustingly bland, staling beans--the sort that Iruka had recommended he buy, he recalled in frustration—and threw it at Sasuke's face.

The satisfaction he got hearing the 'Thwup' and watching her smug face turn bruised and furious was nearly as delicious as the ramen he would be gobbling down as soon as this thing was over.

Then she launched herself at him, punching and kicking. As fast and skilled as she was he still got in another shot at her face, deliberately aiming for the can shaped bruise. She turned, leg twisted around his waist in some sort of yoga wet dream and then Naruto found his body being contorted in ways that did not agree with his spine.With no leverage to speak of, he was held like a pretzel until Sasuke released him.

Not of her own free will though, she had been pulled off by Mizuki-sensei.

'Thats enough, Uchiha-san. Someone of your status shouldn't lower yourself to his level.'

Naruto wasn't happy with the comment, and Sasuke didn't look too happy either. Though her unhappiness was probably not indignation on his part. More like unhappiness caused by too little suffering on his part.

'Demented bitch.' He called out coolly'

'Pathetic loser.' She said

'Thats enough brat. Make your way to the gathered students now, before I decide to kick you out of this tournament for disobeying a superior.'

Why doesn't she get scolded, huh?Mizuki sensei could be a real asshole sometimes, like everybody else was whenever the perfect little princess Sasuke Uchiha was involved.

She followed behind him as he stalked off, close enough to throw an insult or two but not so close as to make anyone think they were on friendly terms.

'Sasuke-chan! What happened to your face?! Who hurt you? I'll beat them to a pulp!' Sakura Haruno was surprisingly well dressed and proper, pink hair completely free of dirt, twigs or sweat and outfit smelling of softener and perfume.

'You talk a lot for someone who called uncle three hours into our exam, troublesome girl.' Shikamaru retorted under his breath, trailing behind Sakura.

Sakura rounded on Shikamaru with a raised fist, the other wrapped around the front of his shirt. 'What was that you lazy ass? You dare to interrupt me when Im chatting to Sasuke chan? Huh?'

'Tch. Let go of me, I don't want any problems.'

Sasuke ignored all of this, probably too concerned with the giant stick shoved up her ass to deign mere mortals with her divine attention. Sakura couldn't catch a hintthough, bless her.

'So, Sasuke chan, who did this to you? I'll totally handle it for you, you know!' she gleamed, and even he knew that she had touched a nerve that was best left ignored.

'I can handle my own business, don't get involved or else you'll regret it.'

Naruto winced at the threatening tone. Way to show team spirit. Sakura swooned instead, and he decided that he would rather not be in the Uchiha's company any longer.

Shooting a look at Shikimaru he said 'Hey, Shikimaru, why don't we go looking for Choji? I'm sure he passed, right?'

Shikimaru gave a long suffering sigh. 'I cant be bothered to get up right now.'

He raised an eyebrow 'So you'd rather stay here with these two?'

'... Let's go then.' Shikimaru said, holding up an arm for Naruto to raise him to his feet. He really was a lazy ass he thought, and pulled Shikimaru into his regular lazy slouch.Now that he looked Shikimaru was pretty well dressed too, just as Sakura had been.

'Hey Shikimaru, whats up with the clothes? I thought that you'd look a bit more, you know, messed up after a weekend in the forest.'

Shikimaru twitched. 'Well, yeah. Sakura decided to give up a few hours into the test after a spider climbed into her hair.'

Whoa. Now that was pretty pathetic, his respect for her dropped a few notches. 'You don't sound all that upset about it, though.'

Shikimaru gave a short, sharp chuckle. Actual laughter was too troublesome, of course.

'What, you kidding? Two days spent at home having three regular meals cooked for me, eight hours of cloud watching and a warm bed instead of making fires, running around for a token and having to make camp? I would have quite five minutes in if my mom wasn't so anal.'

Of course Shikimaru would find the whole exercise annoying. Hard work? No way, not in my vocabulary. He felt sorry for Shikimaru's 'anal' mom. With a son as lazy as he was she would have her hand pretty full. Getting him up from bed in the morning was probably an exercise in futility.

Wait, did he say 8 hours of cloudwatching?!'

Anyways, what with Sakura being the one to give up and all mom didn't really throw that much of a fit so it was all good.'

'You really are a lazy ass, Shikimaru. What about honour, personal integrity and dedication to achieving a worthwhile goal?'

'Hey, hey, do you even know what half that stuff you just said means? You should lay off the late night informercials, you wont grow if you don't get any sleep.'

Naruto grimaced. This guy was could be such a know it all.

'Besides, all that stuff is just too much work. You know how much trouble it would be to work at winning this tournament?'

'Shika, Naruto! There you guys are, I didn't see you guys during the test.' Choji was remarkably snack free for the first time Naruto could recall. Well, it wasn't like they had convenience stores in the forest so that was to be expected. At least someone else understood struggle.

'Hey Choji! So, you made it through the test too huh? Shikamaru quit on day one.'

'Yeah, I very nearly quit too after I finished off my last snack pack. But I figured there was only a few hours left until the test was over so I stuck it out.'

The tub of lard actually seemed proud of himself for holding out for a few hours. He would have killed for a snack pack twenty hours into this whole shebang, but what did he get instead? Pilfered ass-beans, thats what!

'So, everyone's here then?' Iruka calked out a while later.Good, that means I can explain the last part of the test to you all.'

Iruka sensei was looking particularly well-rested and not at all craving a bowl of ramen, and Naruto just wanted to shout at him to spit it out and let him get to his favourite ramen bar. And since he didn't have any sense of propriety or manners he did so.

'Hey, Iruka! Just get this thing over with already, there's a bowl of ramen with my name on it back at Ichiraku's! Besides, I'm too tired to handle your blabbing right now!

'Yep, Iruka wasn't at all pleased about that response. He still hurried it up though, which was all Naruto had wanted anyways. When Iruka had finished and thedropouts had lined up to head off to the academy for the day he bolted, weighing the costs and benefits of gorging on two of each flavour of ramen versus having no electricity or milk for the rest of the month.

Oh well. Hot water was overrated anyways.


	3. Chapter Three, Mock Exam 2

The budding mutual animosity between Naruto and Sasuke did not let up when the first match of the second round came up. In a scene that was vaguely deja-vuSasuke had once more told him to stay out of her way, in complete disregard for Iruka-sensei's shout-y guideline to work as a team not five seconds before the bell rang.

'Take the bench, dwarf. Let the regular-sized people handle this.', she had said

He shother the finger. Sakura screeched in outrage from the sidelines and Naruto was rather inclined to throw the matchand beat Sasuke up instead of their opponents,Hinata and Sakazuki.Hinata being the background character of 3A and Sakazuki being the emo-lord of 3B.

'Oh, whats the point of it all?' Sakazuki muttered, making Naruto grimace in distaste. This guy was a whiny-baby. Why so many preteen girls swooned at his woe be me bull and eyeshadow wearing face made him more confused than after the one and only calculus class he had ever pitched up to.

Sakazuki may decide to keep his mouth shut next time, because he had drawn the Bitch Queen Uchiha's attention.

So quick her movements seemed to be a blur she dashed forward, legs and arms flailing in a manner other people - but not him, no sir- would consider graceful.

To give Sakazuki some credit he was actually faring reasonably well, all things considered. Yeah, he wasn't getting a shot in. And all his attempts at bringing his staff into play were violently rebutted. But he was dodging like, a third of the shots coming his way, which was the best Naruto had ever seen anyone do against Sasuke in close combat.

Yeah... Maybe he should start fighting, before she went on to take out Hinata too.

Despite looking right at him since before they even got into the 'ring' Hinata seemed genuinely surprised to see him when he got within arm distance.

'N-naruto-kun...' her voice was breathy, her face flushed. She didnt seem to realise that she was supposed to be fighting.

She actually looked kinda cute up close.He gave her a smile, then turned serious. 'Ne, Hinata-chan. You should be focused on the match.'

She looked ready to apologize but he cut across her stammering with a little joke. 'I know I'm awesome, Hinata-chan, but its not right for you to have daydreams about me right now.'

Then, like a puppet that just had its strings cut she flopped bonelessly to the ground, the oddest look on her face. He hadnt even made to lift a fist yet. Was she sick or something? Had she died?!

'Hmm.' Sasuke muttered alongside him, her opponent similarly downed, though with a lot more bruising. She actually seemed vaguely approving and didnt even try to helpresuscitate Hinata, the cruel bitch.

After Iruka-sensei assured him that he was overreacting and that Hinata must have been in the sun too long or something, Naruto relaxed, stopped attempting to attempt cpr and took a moment to saviour his progression to the next round.

'Oh Yeah! I am the greatest ninja to have ever lived!' He announced, fist in the air.

How Sasuke had managed to track him down to his favourite haunt was beyond him. Why she had decided to left him feeling pretty uneasy.

'Hmm.' She announced after traipsing her way onto the Fourth Hokage's head.

She didnt belong here. Wasn't awesome enough to stand atop the carved head of the Fourth Hokage. She might be able to get away with the Second, maybe, but definitely not the fourth! On second thought, the Second was the one with all the cool water jutsu and badass lightning sword. Maybe she could go stand on some dung or something.

'Thats a really informative greeting, y'know. Speak up, your majesty. I dont speak stupid.'

Sasuke snorted. 'If there was a million ryo bet on who spoke stupid in the Leaf Village you would be my go to pick, Last Place.'

She threw his class position around like a name and he wondered if it was possible to hate anyone more than he hated this girl infront of him.

'If you just came here to argue with me get lost. This is my spot, I dont need you tainting it with your bullshit.'

He saw her actually bite her lip to keep from giving another stupid comment. Probably something like I'm sure the village's property management will disagree with you on that.

'I actually came to say good job on taking out Hinata like that.'

'... Say what?'

She nodded almost imperceptibly 'Are you deaf? I said, good job on taking out Hinata. Yes, you took your sweet time doing it and she isnt exactly a prizefighter but I was pretty impressed to see you take her out with a genjutsu. You may not be as completely and utterly useless as I thought.'

For some reason Sasuke had come to the conclusion that Hinata's unfortunate fainting spell had been his fault somehow. That he had used some sort of terrifying illusion to get her thinking unspeakable acts. Correcting that assumption would be the ethical thing to do.

'Yes. Yes, that's exactly what I did.'

Her almost trademark sneer lifted up a teeny bit. 'Obviously. Your over the top acting to cover up the fact was ridiculous. For gods sake, someone please send help, dattebayo!'She mimicked nasally then let out a short, almost dignified snort'You should work on that.'

Shows what she knows.

'Is there any other reason you havent left yet?'

Sasuke pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it over. It was covered on both sides in tiny printedromajicharacters.

'What, you couldnt print it out on two pieces of paper and not force me to look for a magnifying glass?'

She ignored him. 'Thats just a few things I wanted you to work on before the fight tomorrow. I figured that since you arent a complete waste I may as well get you to start pulling your weight.'

'I've pulled my weight from the start, but whatever. Why give this to me anyway? Arent you supposed to be the undefeatable prodigy?' He said

'I dont need your help winning. I just thought that it would be a better challenge for me to have to fight against the other team whilst avoiding your inevitable blundering. I'm just doing this as a present of sorts to you.'

Naruto looked at her with narrowed eyes and a foxy grin. 'You're such a bad liar. We're going up against Shuyou and Tien tomorrow and you arent sure if you can overcome their teamwork alone. You need me.'

The tiniest blush appeared on Sasuke's cheeks. 'Its not that I cant defeat them. Its that I want to win by a long margin. An Uchiha uses all available tools to devestate the enemy.'

'What, am I supposed to be a tool?' He asked

'Look, if you dont want to help out I can take care if it myself.'

She tried to grab the page back but he pulled it out of her reach, losing his balance on the edge of the mountain face. She grabbed him by the back of his orange jacket and pulled him back to safety.

'Okay, okay. I'll help out. Naruto Uzumaki is always up for a fight.'

He continued as if nothing happened, his deep breathes the only evidence of his near fall, and she walked off with a nod and without another word.

Their fight with Shuyou and Tien had indeed been pretty hard. Shuyou and Tien were better than average in the taijutsu department but their real skill lay in elemental techniques, something only a handful of kids their age had shown including her.But where she breathed fire from her mouth these two had to work together to shoot globules of thick mud.

Alone neither had the required skill, but some odd byproduct of being born as twins meant their chakra systems had mutated. They could borrow chakra between each other, or even help the other in manipulating it.

She could have taken them down alone but it would have meant possibly taking a mud bullet or two. The shots were just fired off too fast for her to dodge entirely as she was now. Her speed would be corrected soon, but meanwhile it would mean having a rather undignified victory.

So she had given the idiot some help so that he could help. She didnt expect much from him, given his class standing, but had been surprised. The amount he had improved after one nightwith only a scroll was enough to further pique her interest.

First it had been that genjutsu against the Hyuga Embarassment, now this? He was still beyond terrible, but that was a step up from dead weight.

So, when class ended (she had won, of course) Sasuke grabbed Naruto by the arm and pulled him off.

'What the hell are you doing, bitch!?' He wrenched his arm from her grip. He was surprisingly strong, even with being a shrimp.

'You are coming with me. We will train together.'

He bickered and moaned, but Sasuke was an Uchiha and that meant if she wanted something she would get it-- preferably by force.

So it was that Naruto Uzumaki, the idiot shorty of class 3A was invited into the all but deserted Uchiha compound. A tall wall surrounded the area, its once brilliantly red painted visage now fading. The gate and walls spoke of opulence, more befitting the compound of an emperor or feudal lord. The walls were further highlighted by copper, and in the case of the two tall wooden doors the copper was highlighted with gold.

A testament to the greatness of the Uchiha, visible to all who passed by.

Inside, however, the setting was a lot more humble. Wooden buildings with traditional shoji paper windows and walls. Koi ponds, now blackened and dead. Little gardens, with plants either overgrown or withered away.

'Wow. This place is a dump.'

She gritted her teeth. So maybe the place wasnt well cared for. Once she became an official ninja and started earning pay Sasuke would have a cleaning crew come in regularly to fix it all up, but in the meantime was she expected to keep the entire compound squeaky clean on her own?

'I've seen your apartment block, dobe. If this place is a dump then you live in a sewer.'

'You dont have to be so touchy, you know. Not every girl has to be good at house work.'

Her offended sensibilities upon having her first guest over insult the place were partially cooled.

'Besides, Im not sure you're even a girl in the first place.'

'Hmm.' She concluded, taking mental note to extract vengeance for this slight.

They walked on, and the once pretty wooden houses became more sparse before ending altogether. Lush greenland, a small forest and a shimmering lake entered view.

This lake held a lot of memories for her. The day she had blown her first fireball and been granted full clan rights. The night time fishing with her father. Learning water walking from her mother.

Her dad had once said that the lake had been made on a whim by Madara Uchiha, the man who had helped found the Village. His brother, too ill to move, had on his deathbed one evening joked about never fishing again. The next morning he had been carted out back where the lake, filled with fish, had appeared overnight.

'Whoa. Maybe this place isnt so bad after all.'

'Enough talking. Lets get started.' She said

Naruto scratched his head and scrunched his face up. 'You say that, but what exactly are we going to be doing? You just said we were going to train and made me follow you to this place but you still havent said what we'll be doing. Are you going to be teaching me that cool fireball thing?!'

He looked so hopeful. His eyes actually sparkled. She took joy in crushing that enthusiasm. 'No.'

Huffing, Naruto asked 'Well, what will we be working on then? If its boring Im outta here. I do have things to do, you know.'

'Martial Arts. Your form is so terrible it cant be called form. Right now you could be taken out in a fistfight by a bawling toddler.'

'Yep, I'm heading home. Thanks for wasting my time.'

Sasuke grabbed his arm. 'Get into that thing you call your fight stance.'

'Tch. You're a real asshole, Your Highness.'

He got into it anyway. She stepped forward and gently shoved his left shoulder. He fell flat on his ass.

'That happened because your feet were crossed over and your balance off centre. If I could do that with a teeny tiny little push like that what do you think would happen in a fight with a proper ninja?'

He didnt look happy but got to his feet again, putting his hands up in the ready position a bit more hesitantly. His feet werent crossed over this time, thankfully.

This time she swept his right leg out and he fell face first.

'Your leg was too far out.'

It would take nearly an hour to get his stance to an acceptable level, after which she would start working on his kicks and punches.

Why was she bothering with this idiot anyway?

The third round of the chunin exams took place over a single day. If the prospective ninja were either really skilled or really inept it could last anywhere from a few hours through the early hours of morning or right up to midnight, as had once been the case.

But the chunin exam proctors had only to orchestrate matches for around twenty people. He had, instead, had to orchestrate a third round for over fifty.On top of that there was still a full semester of work that couldnt be forevermore delayed and he was handling rowdy kids who had just hit the age double digits.

So the Academy Exams as he had finally gotten around to naming in his head, was going on for nearing two weeks. And what was more was he was having the toughest time working out just what was going on with two of his more prominent students.

Kiba and Shino had stood dumbstruck in the ring, jerkily moving back and forth with wide eyes and sweaty brows. It was not the two of them he was concerned about, though.

Kiba and Shino were not prepared for the deadly combination of Naruto and Sasuke working together. Not mentally prepared, that was.

When the two had executed a flawless shove and heel kick maneover to down Kiba in what was an obvious show of co-operation the schoolyard paused and whispered.

When they did similar techniques again and again in rapid succession some people thought they may have been under an elaborate hoax. The two had seemed to hate each others guts ever since coming out of the forest test, they had done little but bicker and get into fights in the days since. They had even argued before getting into the squiggly set of lines that made up the 'ring'.

But to do all of those moves, and even more impressive, to do them in such a flowing, easy manner seemed to indicate hours of mutual practice. Neither Naruto or Sasuke were the 'work together' sort.

Even he, their teacher, was stumped.

Naruto then gave another shaky, overextending kick and Shino reached for his leg. But Sasuke came out of nowhere and batted the Aburame's arm aside.

This was just ridiculous.

It wasnt like Naruto had gotten good overnight. Nope, he was still really bad. Fighting style was non-existent, he held his fists in a way that would pretty much guarantee breakage as soon as he hit something harder than a stiff marshmellow. His reflexes were good, and he was reasonably fast but he didnt know how to read the fight's tells so his hands and feet were all over the place.

He was strong though, really strong for a kid. Iruka remembered as much from when the kid had come over to his place once to help him move some furniture. But all that strength didnt help much when he couldnt connect.

Sasuke had come along and fixed that, though. She caught their attention just long enough for Naruto to land hits and had the sense to get him out the way if necessary.

Naruto was also fully prepared to act as a meat shield, taking hits without a care and tripping them up so Sasuke could go in for the kill.

Honestly, the match was a joke at this point. The two could have ended it in a minute but had gone a little crazier than usual, prolonging the fight with wide grins. They seemed to be enjoying this too much.

That wouldnt do.

'Okay, thats the match. Naruto and Sasuke win.'

Kiba was upset. 'What! Are you kidding, Iruka-sensei? These guys are a joke. Theres no way Shino and I could lose to Naruto.'

'And you arent losing to Naruto. You're losing to Sasuke and Naruto.'

'I callfavouritism.'

Iruka sighed. Sometimes he wondered just why he thought teaching would be a good gig. When all the fights for the day finished and he had finalized the final rounds for the next day the kids ran off, leaving him to pack everything away with Mizuki.

He could have found some reason for one of the rowdier kids in the class to help out but Iruka found the occasional chore oddly cathartic. A call back to his own days as a rowdy youth.

It took only five minutes to finish packing everything away. An earth clone or two as soon as the students were out of view went a long way. He bid Mizuki a good day, promised to spend some time relaxing with the other teachers after class soon, and headed home.

The Hidden Leaf Village was the friendliest place he had ever visited, his own hometown bias notwithstanding, so he usually took the path home via 'civilian' means. That meant he walked on the pavement and didnt jump from rooftop to rooftop.

It was because of this that he managed to catch the tail end of an argument between Sasuke and Naruto, both facing off infront of a sweet shop. A few passers by had stopped to watch but were making no attempt to stop them. If you were a civilian you simply didnt go about interrupting ninja in training. Still surprised at their newfound teamwork, he chose to hide out and listen in to quench his curiositu.

'I was trying to compliment you.' Sasuke said, even toned

Naruto gesticulated wildly for no apparent reason. His face was red and his words came out fast and furious. 'And you didnt do a good job! Who says something like that?!'

'I do.'

'You're so arrogant. Just because you lost your parents doesnt give you the right to be an ass to everyone whenever you feel like it, y'know!'

Oh boy. This situation was going to devolve pretty quick. Maybe he should step in? But what if they figured out he had been eavesdropping? They may never respect him again!

'I didnt lose them. They were murdered. Dont go around thinking you can lecture me like you know what I feel just because you never had any parents.' Sasuke was blunt, her tone clipped. You could almost feel the coldness seep into the air along with her words.

'At least you had them! And at least you still have people who love you! The whole village treats you like royalty and you treat them like bugs! You're willfully alone, I never had a choice!'

'Since you never had them you dont know what its like to lose them. And what, are you going to start crying?'

Naruto punched her, then. She was knocked off balance and would have been thrown to the floor if not for a graceful move that looked like a ballet pirouette.

'I thought... I thought that you and I could be friends, at first. You're the only other person in the class who knows how lonely it is to grow up on your own, so we had something in common. And I always thought it was amazing, the way you always made every fight look like it was easy and how you learnt every ninja technique right off the bat.'

Naruto inhaled. 'You're really smart, too. In the last few days that you've been helping me my taijutsu has gotten loads better. Its just too bad you're like this.'

Sasuke turned her head away. 'Hmm.'

Iruka continued home. Neither Naruto or Sasuke would appreciate him giving them some words of wisdom right then. And to be honest he was too lost in thoughts of his own parents.

Hopefully they would cool off soon.

Their last fight had been nothing like the symbiotic relationship of the previous days training together. He had become a berserker, taking dozens of punches and kicks just to land a single blow and she had become even more ruthless than before. She tried to shove him aside at the slightest chance and he retaliated in kind, tripping her up in their fight against Ino and Chouji.

They had very nearly lost the fight, what with getting in the other's way as often as fighting their opponents. But Sasuke's skills had seen them through, and he hated her all the more for it. She may be better now, but he'd show her up soon enough. The little smug smirks she sent his way every now and then were the ultimate motivation to train.

'The winners of the academy exam, Team Blue-Three!'

Iruka had become the consummate ringside announcer, for some reason loudly playing up his and Sasuke's comaraderie where there was none.

The crowd cheered and Sasuke's fangirls waved their Uchiha All The Way! flags.

'So, Naruto, Sasuke, what prize do you want? Ryo or a ninja lesson from an ANBU member? Remember, you can't have both so you have to decide as a team.'

Both answered simultaneously. 'Who cares what that idiot wants? Give me the lesson.'

He glared at her. Was she trying to be funny, copying him like that?

'O-okay then. The two of you will have to meet up here tomorrow at six. If you come too late the lesson is off, ANBU are very busy after all. You need to respect their time.'

Naruto rolled his eyes.

'Also...' Iruka continued, grinning. 'There will be one last fight on Monday afternoon. The winning team will split up and face off to see who is the best ninja. No matter who wins that fight know that both of you have already won the exam and that there will be no other prizes. The match is only for fun.'

He grinned at Sasuke in a way he hoped was menacing and she ignored him altogether. But that was okay. The gods had conspired to give him this opportunity, and he would make sure he laid the smack down.

At 5:59 the next day he made it to the academy yard, panting. Sasuke was already there, lying lazily on a tree branch like a jungle cat. He pretended she didnt exist and she did the same to him.

At exactly 6:00 a breeze made Naruto's hair wave about and leaves swirled about, picked up from the ever shed leavesthat littered the grounds of Konoha and its surroundings.

In the centre of the swirling leaves an imposing figure stood, a porcelain mask concealing his identity and lending to the cold detached feel that he gave off.

'That was so cool!'Naruto said, mind going wild with imaginary fight scenes where he used the swirling leaf ANBU teleportation technique to appear in the midst of battle and decimated everyone in a flash.

'You are Naruto Uzumaki.' The ANBU ninja said. His voice was perfectly flat, level and paced. It would have put a robot to shame.

'Y-yes sir!'

'Call me owl.I will be instructing you and your partner in the matters of ninja for the next two hours. Our time is limited so I have decided to give you advice for your own solo training instead of having you run around doing pushups or sparring. Both of which will not be the best use of the short time we have together.'

The Anbu had a bear painted on his mask. Why he insisted on being called owl was beyond understanding. 'Umm... couldnt you maybe teach each of us a cool ninja technique?'

Owl-Bear stared. 'No. There is no effective jutsu I can teach you within that short a time frame, especially without being able to take into consideration your individual traits.'

Naruto wanted to sulk. If this guy was saying it was impossible to teach them anything in a few hours what was the point of this lesson anyway?

'However, I can guarantee you that if you follow the instructions I give you it will serve you better than any jutsu. Good techniques used by bad ninja become bad techniques.Become a good ninja and any techniques you eventually learn will be much more effective.'

Now that, that made sense. Maybe this Owldude knew what he was doing.

'I will be giving each of you tailored training programmes to suit your strengths and weaknesses as well as recommendations for future specialization. Very few people ever get advice like this so early on. Even fewer follow it. Butall of them become excellent ninja.'

'Yeah! Lets do it Mr Owl!'

Owl nodded at them both. Sasuke had somehow made her way beside Naruto without him noticing.

'Now, it is time I instruct you as to your chakra. I will not spend time going over theory, as explained to you it would be more beneficial for me to spend my short time with you giving you practical advice as to how to train on your own. For that I need to know two things: your grasp of chakra manipulation and your chakra itself.'

The man passed a small slip of paper to each of them, barely larger than a stadium ticket and with a slightly rubbery feel to it.

'Channel chakra to your paper and show me the result.'

A moment later his paper had glowed with a blue light before splitting in half. 'Wind.' The instructor commented and turned to acknowledge Sasuke, who's paper had crinkled and shrunk.

'Lightning.'

The Uchiha bitch did not seem at all happy at this, but held her tongue. For that he was glad, he'd had it up to his neck with her stupid face and even stupider comments that she thought was so very smart. What was wrong with lightning anyway? He would trade in a heartbeat. What good was wind anyway?

'I will not be teaching you any elemental techniques, but simply knowing what type you have a proclivity towards will help steer you in your future decisions of specialisation. Most do not bother to check their natural affinity until they are chunin, some realise that the skill set they have worked on for years is diametrically opposed to their nature.'

The instructor went on for a bit longer. Naruto didn't get much of it, but he supposed that it would be pretty stupid if he was to practice fire techniques for years only to realise that if he had chosen wind techniques he would have been much stronger.

'What sort of specialties were you aiming to pursue?' Owl asked.

He scratched his head in confusion. 'Specialties? Is Hokage a specialty?'

Beside him Sasuke emenated disbelief. Evidently he had said something dumb. 'No. It is a title. Elemental techniques, assassination, interrogation, tracking. These are examples of specialisations.'

'Ohh, now I get it. Well, I want to specialise in puppeteering and elemental techniques. I havent found anything else that interests me.'

Owl nodded and turned slightly, looking expectantly at Sasuke. 'Martial arts. Elemental techniques. Illusions. Swordfighting. General weapon throwing. Assassination.'

'Dont forget bitchiness. Though, you're already a black belt in that.' He mumbled this under his breath but she caught it, twirling to face him. Her long black hair twirled with her, red lips pulled into a snarl. She was ready to fight and he was more than happy to oblige.

Her words from the week previous were still fresh on his mind, along with the slight sting of betrayal.

'I will not spend my time breaking up fights with children. I am not a class teacher or caretaker. I will not hesitate to leave.'

Naruto spluttered apologies and Sasuke 'hmm' ed, but both stopped immediately. This was a veryrare opportunity for both of them. Academy students were either taught by the academy or their parents. Neither of them liked the academy, he because it was all so boring and she because she had long surpassed pass requirements. The second was obviously not possible, no matter how much Naruto dreamed of having a badass dad to teach him landscape altering techniques it wasnt to be, and wishing wouldnt change that.

'Now, volume.Whilst I can sense to some degree the amount of chakra you both have-- something you will naturally learn if your relationship to chakra is sufficiently strong-- it is very far from accurate. For the sake ofaccuracy you will both need to actively flare it for me to adequately gauge.'

They were both shown a stance and handsign, expected to copy without being told. Corrections had to be made. Not to Sasuke's stance, no that was picture perfect. But Naruto's arms had been too low, legs not wide enough, hands off centre, etcetera.

He was told to release all he could, pulling as deep and wide into that ever present energy that centred in his belly. Instead of starting as a trickle like a tap being turned it was more like opening a firehose.

Immediate, forceful and somewhat uncontrollable.

Even he realised that the amount of chakra he was releasing must be impressive, he could feel it's weight in the air, see the faint blue light that surrounded him and hear the

ever so soft 'whoosh' noises that seemed to emanate from every pore. If he tried to push some more it almost seemed that he could taste it.

'Stop.' The instructor called, a tinge of surprise evident.

'That was... very impressive. You have the most chakra I have ever seen in person, certainly one of the largest in the village. There are, from what I have been told, perhaps only three or four active ninja in our village with a chakra capacity larger than yours.'

He gave a thumbs up in recognition of his own awesomeness, still unused to releasing so large an amount of chakra all at once. He had never actual felt his chakra levels drop before. The clone, replacement and henge technique had never so much as dipped them.

'Though... I will have to inform that you will never be able to achieve a great degree of control, certainly not enough to perform anything as complex as chakra strings.'

'W-what?' he asked

'While it is possible to improve your chakra control appreciably with certain exercises I can tell that your chakra capacity growth will far outstrip that of your control. You are only ten, have never done any sort of extensive training

or practiced intense jutsu and yet your capacity is humungous. The only time most ninja experience significant growth in their reserves is when each of those factors are ideal. Age, physical training and high-energy technique training are the three most significant factors.'

'I don't understand. You mean that I'll never be able to become a puppeteer?' his voice very nearly cracked.

Owl's professional demeanour was very momentarily tinged with compassion.

'Yes, that is what I am saying. Don't take it too hard, kid. With your chakra reserves you'll be a monster when it comes to elemental techniques, you'll be able to do things that would kill most experienced ninja to perform. What your reserves will be like with a decade of training...'

Here the man trailed off and turned his attention to Sasuke, but Narutodidn't pay attention to anything else from that point on. They were made to throw weapons, sprint, jump and do an assortment of little tests to gauge their ability and proclivity. Naruto went through the motions without question or a drop of enthusiasm.

Then they were told to sit aside and wait. He vaguely noticed the man taking out a pair of scrolls and writing intently but phased everything out, too lost in his thoughts.

The sun moved across the sky unheeded as he sat plopped onto the ground.

'Hey. Hey kid.'

A soft pat on the shoulder. Owl stood close, the brown of his eyes visible through the small slits in porcelain.

'Y-yeah?'

'Here.' The man said, his eyes still staring intently as he passed a scroll. The ink had yet to fully dry, he could tell, and written in beautiful, bold letters at the top of the page was his name followed by dozens of lines of tiny, neat script. Diagrams dotted along the page, further explaining some of the writings.

'I've already given your teammate her training routine ten minutes back.' Sure enough, Sasuke was nowhere to be seen.

'Just follow everything that's written in there diligently and you will turn out great. I see a lot of potential in you, kid.'

'Anyway, good luck.' And then the ANBU disappeared, and Naruto left.


	4. Chapter Four, Mock Exam Finals

Naruto was furious and sad at the same time, tears held back in the corner of each eye and lips curled into a snarl so vicious the usual disapproving looks on his stomp back home had been replaced with those of fear.

He hadbarely noticed even that though, fists clenched at his sides until he slammed the door to his apartment open with a kick.His lock was broken, obviously, and even in his fit of rage he could tell that he would be fixing the thing up as soon as he wore himself out.

The usual mess was present, the tables of his various projects had been paused to focus on his singly important project. The one that hung mockingly in a spread eagled fashion from his illicit line, head downturned in an image reminiscent of a crucifixion.

It was so close to completion, and he had already been so proud of it. It was, without a doubt, the single most complex and cool project he had undertaken. He had never put as much effort into anything as he had the ninja puppet before him, nothing came even close.

It had been his single minded obsession for nearly a month, he had missed school and trips to Ichiraku's for it, had gone without sleep and taken parts with him to work on in the bathroom. He bit back a sob.It wasn't fair! He thought, the previous adoration he hadfelt when looking at his pet project had turned to a bitter resentment.

So he punched it, square in the face he had taken hours to carve and felt a hollow satisfaction at hearing the crack of wood. So he grabbed a poker, remembering that he had decided against giving his puppet a sword arm, and whacked away relentlessly.

He knew that we would regret it and that it would make him even more bitter about the whole mess, but right now he only wanted the hollow satisfaction he'd felt as it's carved head had been cracked open.

He didn't stop until there was nothing left but pieces, his eyes stinging as he cried. He had a lot of stamina, freakishly so he had been told, but right now he just felt really tired.He fingered at the biggest of the remnants, the right forearm of what had only fifteen minutes ago felt like his greatest accomplishment.

It was the spring-loaded arm, the device he had designed all on his own remembering the cool things the sand village puppeteer had done.

In a childish moment he placed the wooden forearm over his own, then paused. A fit of inspiration later and the tears were gone, replaced by a grin, excited muttering and the clicks and clacks of tinkering that went on well into the night.

Naruto had arrived that particular Monday morning with a brilliant red cloth wrapped thick around his right arm, the huge bulge making it rather apparent that he was concealing something beneath. That was okay though, he wasn't trying to hide the fact that he had a concealed weapon.

All he needed to do was make sure that no-one figured out exactly what it was. And right from the get go he was forced to deal with an annoying witch.

"Why do you have a curtain wrapped around your arm, dobe? You do know we'll be fighting, not interior decorating? Oh, I know, you're saving that to spruce up your room at the hospital? The rooms there are really bland."

He didn't know what he had done to annoy her since their meetup with the ANBU but ever since arriving this morning she had been even more antagonistic than usual. It was a turnaround from before the mock exams, when she had barely said a word to him or anyone else.

"I don't know, Uchiha-sama." He called back with sarcasm "You'll have to let me know just how bland the rooms are when I send your backstabbing ass back there all black and blue."

"Kyaa!" he heard Sakura squeal from the 'stands', about a dozen rows of plastic chairs they had all dragged out from a supply closet upon arriving at the academy and lined up haphazardly in the dusty academy playground.

At least until the boisterous Ino Yamanaka had arrived with her posse of detail oriented and completely batshit insane harpies who had them arrange and rearrange the chairs for hours before being called off by Iruka sensei.

"Oh? Backstabbing? And when did I do something like that?"

"Oy, don't play dumb now all of a sudden! You left that bastard mutt Kiba and that creepy guy Shino to take my token back in that damned forest! I swore I'd get you back for that and now I'm just glad Iruka sensei gave me the excuse to do it without getting a detention." He said

"You really should be careful of what you say, dobe. You almost make it sound as if you have a chance of doing anything other than stand around and have me drag your pitiful excuse for a shinobi behind all through the tournament."

This was the final fight of the tournament, where thewinning team would split and face off against one another for the title of number one in the class. There were no prizes on the line, no points going towards final grade. Just an opportunity to beat a fellow student senseless.

He was definitely alright with that, though. "I earned my spot in the finals just like you did!"

"You don't really believe that lie, do you? If you do you're even more of an idiot than I thought. Though, since I feel sorry for you I'll let you quit now and spare you the humiliation of having to get knocked around like a ragdoll."

His fist reared back, Naruto rushed forward as fast as his legs could carry him planning to deck Sasuke right in her cocky little face. She dodged with a single step, twisting to the side in one fluid movement. And with that the pre-fight banter was off.

He swung out with a right kick but she dodged once more with the same ease and Naruto overextended as a result, the accursed laws of physics working against him when his intended blow hit nothing but air.

Sasuke didn't have the same problem, her responding kick sending him rolling onto the floor. She wasn't the type to play around, it seemed.

Herolled back into a standing position, embarrassed at the ease with which he had been dispatched.She would regret that though.

He redoubled his efforts, his taijutsu skills were not the greatest in the class, as far as having style and technique went he would admit being the worst. But he was fast, resilient and most of all, strong. Much stronger than a kid his age had any right to be, and it showed when even his blocked kicks and punches caused the unflappable Uchiha to wince.

For all his blocked attacks none were making it through and most were being dodged entirely. Sasuke really was that much better a fighter.

So when she saw an opening in his wild assault she took advantage, viciously. Sinking a punch deep into his gut when he raised his guard an inch too high she continued with a one-two-three jab, punch and kick.

Wiping the blood from his split lip, he swore. "Bitch. I'll pay you back for that."

"Oh? You couldn't afford to pay for skills like mine, useless wannabe." Sasuke said, self-important smirk still in place.

Then he pointed to a spot behind Sasuke with abewildered expression. "W-what the heck is that!!" Naruto exclaimed, and all gathered turned to look at what could have spooked him so bad.

Suckers. Snikt! Two reshaped kunai shot out of Naruto's wrapped arm trailed by the thin yet remarkably strong material that was ninja wire and aimed at Sasuke's torso. Amazingly she dodged and he bit back a frustrated groan.

"What was that?!" she practically ordered him to answer, sounding just barely surprised at his secret weapon.He was really tired of her inflated sense of self worth, acting as if she was a queen or something ordering him around but complied anyway.

He threw off his cloth with a flourish, revealing a bulky polished wood and metal device that wrapped around his forearm. Two thick coil springs were visible through slits in the wood, no doubt the source of propulsion and bright orange spraypaint made a poorly done approximation of flame patterns.

"This?" he asked proudly "I made it all by myself, you know. I call it my Reborn Puppet Steel-Line Emitting and Recapturing Gauntlet mk1, its super-cool, right?"

Sasuke face-palmed at his announcement. "God, you are

an idiot."

"Tch, broody bitch." He ignored Iruka-sensei's reprimanding squawk of indignation at his language "You wouldn't know what was cool if it hit you in the face."

"Whatever."

Sasuke ran forward, her long hair trailing behind her as she launched a kick at his head. He blocked with his left arm and grimaced at the power of the strike. Girl or not, even he had to admit that Sasuke was damn tough. Not as tough as he was though.

He made a grab for her raised leg that she dodged with ease. Then she wailed on him. Punch after punch, kick after kick. Anyone of his classmates would have needed to call it quits by now but Naruto took pride in his ability to take a hit. She wasn't going to be giving him the space to shoot his line at her again, though.

He would have to take his chance when he saw it, not that Sasuke would be making it easy. There didn't seem to be any holes in her fighting style, at least none that he could see. There would be no conventional means of retaliation, meaning he would go for the unconventional.

So when Sasuke did a jumping spin kick he took the shot to his sidewithout blocking and grabbed at her flailing hair, slamming her back-first onto the ground. It was only his second clean hit of the match against Sasuke's hundred but Sasuke wasn't anywhere near as tough as he was, so he didn't need to match her strike for strike he only needed to make each strike count.

"Uwhh" the wind was forced out of her lungs on impact.

Naruto, not being the chivalrous sort, didn't feel sorry for her and tried to beat her while she was down. She rolled back in spite of her pain, but now he had a clean shot at her. He grinned and pulled the trigger.

'click'

No wires shot out. Shit. The damn thing wasn't working!

'click. Click. Click.'

Sasuke looked vicious. He felt the punch before he saw her move, the force nearly lifting him off the ground.

"Winner, Uchiha Sasuke." He heard Iruka sensei call fromthe ground, the chalked out border line he had been knocked out of hazy in his swirling vision. Blood trickled down his face and his nose, which seemed to be at an odd angle in his peripheral vision, burnt as if on fire.

"You broke my nose!" he called out, his voice sounding strange. She didn't even spare him a glance as she walked off the platform. The bitch.

"I cant believe you would try to do something like that to a girl, Naruto."

Naruto held an icepack to his purple, swollen nose and shot Iruka-sensei the finger "That thing isn't a girl! She's insane!" he gestured to his face "Look at what she did to me!"

Iruka frowned at him. The two were in the classroom, his nose having been patched up with the class first-aid kit and by an indignant teacher. His nose had been reset and the usual smell of alcohol disinfectant was blunted, as were all other smells.

"She was just taking the fight seriously is all. You shouldn't treat her so badly, Naruto. You know what happened to her family."

Naruto made a yammering gesture, unimpressed. "Blah, blah, blah. I don't care about any of that. It's sad and all, but that doesn't give her the right to be a bitch all the time. I swear, I'm going to beat the crap out of her for this."

Iruka hit him upside the head. "Watch your mouth. Anddon't go looking for a fight with Sasuke tomorrow, I'm not going to fix up your nose again if you do something stupid."

"Tch. She just got lucky is all! I could totally beat her if I wanted to! I wasn't even trying that hard anyway!" he said

He could tell Iruka-sensei wasn't buying it though. "Anyway, did you really make that gauntlet thing all by yourself?"

"It's called the Reborn Puppet Line Emitting and Re-capturing Gauntlet mk1, Iruka sensei... And yeah, I did! I think it's going to be one of my top projects too. Though... it jammed up on me back there..."

"Hmmm..." Iruka thought for a bit "Let me have a look at it Naruto."

He was all too happy to have Iruka-sensei inspect his genius first hand.

"Wow, this is really impressive. If you could put as much effort into class as you did with this you might get out of the dead last position."

"But all that class stuff is sooo boooring, Iruka-sensei. Why would I want to know all that stuff anyways."

Iruka just sighed. He and his sensei had this conversation at least once a day for the past year, and he hadn't been convinced yet. And he wouldn't be any time soon!

"You know, it's too bad you don't know any fuuinjutsu. Devices as complex as this tend to be tricky to get working, and you could do the same thing better with fuuinjutsu, and a whole lot more besides."

Naruto looked thoughtful. Something that could work better than his spring mechanism?

"Hey, Iruka-sensei... What's fuuinjutsu again?"

"We just had a lesson on fuuinjutsu two weeks ago!" Iruka said

Naruto winced. He could tell that there would be a really, really long lecture coming on now. Maybe he should have just kept his mouth shut.

"Knock, knock."

No answer.

"Knock, knock" more urgent

No answer.

"Naruto, open up this door right now!" said Iruka, a bit of worry seeping into his tone.

Naruto hadn't shown up for school for three days, ever since his admittedly painful loss to Sasuke in the first round of their mock exam. Naruto wasn't exactly a model student, his attendance record looked like a game of tick-tack-toe, but three days in a row was a record even for him.

"Knock, Knock!"

No answer.

"Thats it Naruto!"

He had half a mind to kick his students door in but that wasn't appropriate. So instead he picked the lock. Ninja 101- a class Naruto had never attended once in the past two years he recalled with annoyance.

He swung the door open gently, then paused. He had never been inside Naruto's apartment but he had never

expected... this. There was no couch, no tv. Or rather, there was a tv, only it had been screwed apart and dismantled and was lying helter-skelter on a few different tables, of which there were five in what was supposed to have been a living room.

None of the tables were of the same make, or even the same size. The one pushed up against the blackout curtains wasn't even a table but a mass-produced door put ontop of cinder-blocks. There was no free space on any of the tables, an eclectic assortment of tools, cloths, mechanical parts rubber tubing and bottles of dye and other chemicals lay everywhere, some piled ontop of the other. If he didn't know any better he would have thought himself in a sweatshop.

"Naruto..." he called softly, looking around the apartment. The teen wasn't in his room or the bathroom, and his single-mattress bed was still made. Iruka started to panic. The whole situation was wrong. He had looked in the closet, behind the curtains and in every nook and cranny the sneaky blonde may have hid himself.

He had found an open Bingo Book on Naruto's kitchen counter- seemingly the only relatively clear surface in the whole place- but left it untouched. Five years and he had never gotten the boy to crack open a book of his own free will, if this had even achance of getting Naruto interested in reading he didn't care that it wasn't legal for civilians.

"Naruto!" he shouted, his voice tight with unease

"I wasn't sleeping, Iruka-sensei!" A head shot up from the cinderblock table, the pile of black cloth revealing a yellow head of hair. Relief.

"Naruto! Where have you been!" Naruto looked around, probably wondering why he wasn't in the classroom. "Umm... Why are you here, Iruka-sensei?" Naruto asked, scratching his head

"Dont play dumb with me, Naruto! You haven't been to class in three days!"

Naruto's eyes widened in surprise. Either the kid was a good actor- and he knew from experience that wasn't the case- or he really had no idea what was going on. "What? But I was there just yesterday, right? I fought the bitch and she got a lucky punch in, right?"

A lucky punch? More like a dozen, and a few good kicks too. "It's Friday, Naruto! What have you been doing anyway?"

"Lets see... I went to Ichiraku's for after class, then I visited the old man and..." Here Naruto paused and whirled around, mumbling "The squiggly-centre runs at a fifty-five degree to the line kanji... No, no, no! Its all wrong! It'll never work like this..."

Iruka went nearer and peaked his head to look at what Naruto had been working on and saw dozens of pages with carefully arranged symbols and sloping, untidy kanji. It was clearly Fuuinjutsu, and though he had never learned the esoteric art the pages he saw actually seemed to be the real deal. That was really impressive, even more so when he considered the student who had produced it.

"Naruto... Who taught you this?" Whoever could get an art as hard to grasp as fuuinjutsu and teach it to a super-hyperactive, hard headed kid like Naruto was an amazing teacher.

"No-one. I asked the Old Man for some scrolls on fuuinjutsu and he gave 'em to me as long as I promised to be careful and not attempt any, uhh... something-something transopti-something's. But all of this... it just clicks,you know?"

He didn't, and knowing that Naruto didn't even know what the method he was supposed to be wary of was called didn't put him at ease. Not that he could do anything about it. If Hokage-sama had decided Naruto was mature enough to learn Fuuinjutsu Naruto would learn it.

He wouldn't hope to think himself more intelligent than the man who had once memorised the entire village library verbatim... Maybe he could force the boy to read some books on safety before he burnt the village down, though.

"That's enough. You are coming with me." He grabbed Naruto by the scruff of his orange jumpsuit- the boy hadn't taken off his school clothes yet- and headed off to the academy.

"Hey, hey! I was nearly done, you know! Just a few more minutes and I'll have figured it out!"

"If you haven't figured that all out in the past three days I don't think a few more minutes would have cut it."

"I wasn't working on that formula all the time! I learned awhole bunch of other stuff too, you know!"

"Well, if you say so. You probably didn't eat that much did you? How about I take you to Ichiraku's after class?" It was better to appeal to the boy through his stomach than his head, and Naruto definitely deserved it with all the work he had done the last few days.

God, he was so proud. He would have never thought the day would come when Naruto missed class because he was studying too hard.

"Really! Yes!! I'm totally gonna wolf down some miso!" Naruto shouted, frightening an old man in the street below who looked up at the rooftops to glare at them.

'Sorry!' Irukacalled back. The apology's effect was watered down because of Naruto's laughter, though.

Years later it would be this day that Iruka would think back to as the time he first noticed Naruto change.

Hereafter Naruto would no longer be the rambunctious, dim-witted dead-last. His grades would skyrocket, his martial arts would become deadly yet eerily similar to Sasuke's own and the boy's momentary fascination with fuinjutsu would become all encompassing.

Scrolls of paper, thick esoteric textbooks and bottles of ink would cover his class desk and frequently that of Shikimaru, who was more than happy to use it as an excuse for not doing work.

He would completely tune out the lessons and work on his own projects, lectures ignored. A few months after this he would go cold turkey on even his pranks, claimimg time spent teaching people lessons was time that could better be spent working on his totally awesome ninja skills.

It would slightly insult Iruka as an instructor, but the Chunin would still make a better effort to keep in fighting shape from then on.


	5. Chapter Five, Graduation Day Timeskip

_**(1) This is the first chapter of the second arc (Arc One being the Academy Exams). This chapter and the last have used the more preferred quotation " " marks instead of the (tx) ' ' marks, as suggested to me. I will go back and do the same to earlier chapters.**_

 **(2) It may be a while before I release the next chapter, simply because support for this story is pretty much non-existent. I dont yet have skin thick enough to keep releasing chapters of a story no-one seems to like and would rather work on this and other stories in the background without releasing them or releasing a chapter only when Ive already got a few completed.**

 _ **I don't want to make it seem like I'm holding chapters ransom, thats not what I'm about, but I really enjoy writing and I cant take the disappoint and demotivation of releasing a chapter I think is decent to the sound of crickets. It saps my zest for writing and makes the process feel like a chore instead of the delightful hobby it should be. And I may decide to just release as I go along without any expectations but I thought it was important to at least mention the possibility.**_

 _ **(3) Noticed that my previous commitment to keep to english terms as much as possible wasnt really followed and several mispellings, grammatical errors, etc managed to slip through the cracks. May go back to edit in future.**_

 _ **(4) Back to more story-specific info. Naruto will, as has been shown, use puppet-inspired armour powered by fuinjutsu as opposed to chakra strings, which he will never be able to use. I find one of the inconsistencies in the actual Naruto story that Naruto's chakra levels are actually underrated when compared to other higher class individuals. Bar none, Naruto is THE chakra battery. If an average kage bunshin takes more chakra to make than ten regular bunshin (a vastly off count and more chakra than the average green genin can produce) and Naruto can create thousands and still have them perform techniques even more chakra intensive than themselves it is safe to say that his reserves are enormous.**_

* * *

" _Today is the day!_ You've tried out early twice and flopped, but _now_ you will be vindicated."

Stomp. Stomp.

"A life of adventure and intrigue, ninja techniques powerful enough to level mountains and badass companions who get your sense of humour and dont mind if sometimes you pull out your formula journal to work on a potentially important problem."

Naruto stomped forward, voice carrying an air of authority and power. His charisma was palpable, his body language exuding confidence. Even Cicero would be impressed at his speaking ability.

He may very well have been an army general or benevolent emperor in a past life.

"There is only one thing in your way. And though it is hard, and the enemy has defeated you at every meeting thus far, you will not let up and _today_ you will stand the victor!"

He slapped his hands together and a little boy jumped in fright on the pavement.

"So please, just perform the damn bunshin already!"

Half hearted clapping.

He looked overhead, where his mortal enemy, bane of existence and first choice to be cannobolized if a post-apocolyptic world ever arose, stood horizontal on a bakery sign.

"Bravo. Your rousing speech has woken up everyone in the village who doesnt give a damn. That means everybody, if you didnt know it already."

"Screw off, Sasuke. And take your damn feet off that sign, you'll get it dirty. You think you're impressing anyone just because you know the wall walking exercise?"

Sasuke hopped down. "Hmm. Theres nobody I want to impress, _dobe_."

He continued walking and she followed. He upped the pace. She followed. He moved his legs so fast they were a blur, each stride longer than hers. Still, she followed.

"Gah! Is there something you want from me?!"

She smirked in the way that still made him want to strangle the life out of her.

"Im just here to take a good look at you. Your forlorn, hopeless look after you fail the exam is going to be so much sweeter after seeing your stupidly confident one this morning. I want to burn that look into my memory to saviour for as long as I live."

"Burning it into your memory would be a lot better if you had the sharingan. Wasnt that the _dojutsu_ of ypur clan? That is, if you're actually an Uchiha, _bastard_."

Years of banter had desensitized him to most of her retorts and given him a few sore spots to poke whenever she got a little too mouthy. Not to disappoint, she was pissed.

"I guess we'll see how witty you are when you fail for the third me. Something tells me you'll be a lot less mouthy then, dead last."

She walked away, thankfully.

"I haven't been the dead last for years!" He called back, and was ignored.

She would see. He was Naruto Uzumaki, future armoured Hokage and greatest ninja to ever grace the elemental nations- also, the universe in general. He had this exam in the bag. The test papers would be a cinch, weapons throwing a breeze. General fitness and martial arts a cakewalk. Not even that damned tricky illusion would get in his way this time. He had a good feeling about his chances at passing this today, and his feelings never let him astray.

Amusingly, when Naruto got to class it was to find Shikimaru laying across the desk covered by a blanket. His usual class outfit was even messier than usual, jacket inside out and black tee back to front.

Snorting, he shoved the boy off.

"Naruto, you're an ass."

Shikimaru said this upon making rough acquiantance with the floor, without opening his eyes.

"Why would you say it was me? It could have been anyone."

"Its always you. Or one of those troublesome girls. My eardrums arent being blown apart right now so you are the perpertrator."

"Thats some fucked up logic right there, Shika."

Shikimaru yawned. "Meh. It works."

Stepping over his friend, Naruto pulled out a seat and got comfortable. "What are you doing here this time anyway? It's like, two hours before class. You're never early."

"Mom threw me out at four thirty this morning. Said that since it was graduation day I should be excited and getting ready. When I said getting excited about a troublesome job like being a ninja would feel like way too much effort and that I felt like throwing the whole test to become a simple shopkeeper she attacked me woth a soup ladle."

Naruto laughed. "You'd think you would learn your lesson by now. So you threw on your clothes as quick as you could and sneaked out with the blanket when she went to try and get your dad involved."

''Yep. Now let me get back to sleep already.'

* * *

Naruto sat on the academy swing. There was an excited buzz in the air and it felt like every parent was congratulating their kid on passing. All his classmates had on a new, shiny metal head protector. He wasn't so lucky.

Failed. Again. This was ridiculous!

He had done so well Iruka had congratulated him halfway through! He had even beaten the unbeatable Uchiha in weapons throwing _and_ general fitness!

So why was it that a single jutsu gone wrong meant he was unfit for ninja life?

Maybe he should call it quits. This was becoming ridiculous. It had been rather apparent to him a while in that the _bunshin_ was beyond him. He had the raw power, but some aspects of his chakra system was anathema to that particular technique.

Naruto had hoped it wasn't so, had tried to delude himself into thinking that if he just practiced often enough, followed his chakra control training diligently enough and wished hard enough he could overcome it.

Well, positive thinking wasn't going to fix this.

And then the world loudly proclaimed that today he was going to be _fucked up the ass_ twice. Sasuke was walking over, the glinting ninja forehead protector attached to her hip.

She looked... odd. She didn't have the cheshire cat grin he had expected. If he wasn't so upset he would have called her expression sympathetic.

"Come to rub it in my face? That's what you said you wanted, right?" Naruto said bitterly.

She blinked.

"'I-"

"Dont even try to deny it. Well, you know what, you were right. I failed again. I feel like crap, and I dont want to deal with you. Just fuck off already."

Sasuke's face became vicious. "Fine. I'll leave. You were never cut out to be a ninja anyway. You should just give it up, pathetic loser."

He sucked in a breath. Were his thoughts that easy to read or had everyone already come to that conclusion?

Maybe the life of a ninja really just wasn't for him.

* * *

Naruto had circled the Hokage Tower seventeen times. Eyes blank, head down and shoulders slumped over.

He had made his decision. Let it not be said that he was a complete idiot. Trying the same thing over and over was not going to get him a different result. Truth was, life wasnt fair. His dream had been rigged against him from the start.

Over a thousand hours of chakra control exercises had only made his control worse, the deliberate practice inciting his reserves to grow ever larger and ever denser.

All he had to do was muster up the courage to go in there and call it quits. Make his dropout official.

A blur of movement from the topmost window caught his attention. That wasn't too unusual. Ninja came and went from the tower on a regular basis, and for some reason a whole bunch of them were adverse to coming and going from the door like regular people.

What _was_ weird was that it was Mizuki, his class's assistant teacjer. A man who _never_ had any business at the tower and who was now running like the possessed, eyes darting about with a huge scroll slung over his shpulder.

It could have been a mission. He could have been blowing the whole thing out of proportion. But Naruto followed anyway.

Naruto was fast, very fast. Fast enough that even when keeping as stealthy as possible to make sure Mizuki didnt realize he was being tailed he could still keep even with the chunin rank ninja's mad dash.

They ran right through the village, jumping on rooftops, scaling down gutters and leaping fences. And then to make him even more suspicious of foul play they ran right _over_ the wooden wall of Konoha instead of checking out at the gate with the guards.

Unless Mizuki had been given an S-rank mission this was against the rules. As, from what he could tell, Mizuki was a rather average Chunin there was no way he would be given a mission of that difficulty, least of all _solo_.

They ran on, through the fifty foot tall trees of the forest. Until Mizuki decided he was far enough to have gotten away and stopped on the forest floor, barking a triumphant laugh. The man was _obviously_ pleased at having pulled one over the village and run off with a precious scroll.

He had never liked Mizuki, not really. Not even after the guy had treated them all to dango that one time, or even after he had ducked points from the Uchiha bitch in that taijutsu exhibition. He hadn't thought the guy was a dirty little snake though.

He hopped down for what his mind had already felt would be an awesome, action-movie worthy confrontation.

"Naruto, what are you doing here?"

"What am I doing? What are you doing! You're stealing that scroll from the village!"

Mizuki wasn't even fazed, the slick bastard. "W-what? Stealing? I would never do something like that! I shouldn't really be telling you this, but I am on a special mission on behalf of hokage-sama, you see. I cant really give you any more details than that, but this scroll right here needs to be delivered to a certain location at a certain time for the good of the village."

Naruto gave a nod of understanding.

"Ohh, I see, that makes perfect sense then... Not!"

How dumb did this guy think he was.

"Tch, you should have just taken the hint and disappeared quietly brat."

Mizuki threw a kunai straight for his head, hoping to end it in one clean move no doubt. The exercises Naruto had been practicing religiously had him dodging it as though it were moving through jelly.

The next two kunai were dodged with the same ease as he closed in, chakra being channelled to the tiny seal inscribed over his right forearm.

' _poof_!'

A sleek silver gauntlet appeared, thin patterns shining on it's smooth surface in bright orange. The Gauntlet mk2.

He channelled chakra to his arm once more and a thin, crackling beam of fire shot towards Mizuki's vest. Fire comes courtesy of the Uchiha condensed beam of fire was called the elemental condensed recycled beam, but he wasn't going to be shouting out all his technique names in a situation as serious as this.

The beam had penetrated nearly all the way through the traitor Mizuki's armoured vest, not doing any real damage but probably scorching him something fierce and ensuring a trip to the clothing store.

For all his ineptitude and degraded skills Mizuki had still been a chunin, even an academy student as awesome as him wouldn't be able to take the man on in a fair fight.

Mizuki struck at him with a powerful jab to the face that had him seeing double momentarily. Diversionary tactics it was. Raising the gauntlet slightly he tried for another of his techniques. 'Scatter Shot!'

A quick burst of flame shot from his palm with a crack like a shotgun blast, too weak to set even a candle alight but bright enough to confuse Mizuki and give him the seconds he needed to create some distance between them.

Now that he had used a second flame technique there was probably barely enough stored away in his gauntlet for two, maybe three more uses.

"You know, when I first started at the academy I wondered why a demon like you was so weak. Always pulling those stupid pranks but incapable of showing any sort of skill or power. Then, for whatever reason you decided to show your hand. Always working with that bizarre sealing of yours. Second in the martial arts class. Becoming a prodigy overnight."

Naruto paused. "A demon?'

Mizuki smiled cruelly. "Oh come on. Dont act like you dont know. You, Naruto Uzumaki, are the Nine-Tailed Fox reborn!"

"W-what?"

"You're either a damn good actor or you _really_ dont know. Thirteen years ago the Nine-Tailed Fox attacked this village. It was taller than the Hokage Mountain, with eyes as red as blood and teeth larger than than I am were killed."

Mizuki paused for dramatic effect. "That creature was sealed inside you. You, Naruto, are the Nine-Tailed Fo-"

 _Tzzah._ Another condensed recycled beam was shot, this one passing through the armour less sleeve of Mizuki's right arm. Without the aid of that pesky armour his beam could pierce almost all the way through flesh and bone. That arm would be useless now.

"Aaah!" Mizuki screamed

"Shut up already. How stupid are you anyway, giving a boss villain level monologue in the middle of a fight? You think I was just going to wait for you politely?"

Mizuki glared. "You damned demon."

"I am no more a demon than my fridge is milk and eggs. Putting something into a box or container doesnt turn that container into what was added, dumb ass. And you just said I was always busy with my sealing. You think I wouldn't tell the difference? I know, maybe you thought in thirteen years I wouldn't see the giant tattoo on my stomach that appeared whenever I channeled chakra."

Whilst talking Naruto had unsealed a length of rope from his silver gauntlet and made quick work of tying up the wailing Mizuki. Having a beam burn through most of the bone, muscle and joints in your bicep couldn't hurt that bad right?

"Naruto! Whats going on here?"

His other class teacher appeared as he started dragging a gagged Mizuki back toward the village. If Naruto was as cynical as ninja were supposed to be he would first question Iruka for being a potential accomplice.

As it was though he shot the man a grin and tossed him the scroll that had been awkwardly balanced on his shoulder. He knew Iruka, after all.

"Iruka! Great, it would have sucked to carry both Mizuki and the scroll back by myself. You're always there when I need you, sensei."

Iruka frowned. "Did you do this?"

"Yep. Now give me a hand, I cant carry all this by myself you know. You take the scroll and I'll take the bastard Mizuki."

Iruka was confused, and Naruto planned to keep it that way. It was the ultimate justice after years of boring lectures that left his head feeling muddled and heavy.

Iruka sighed. "You take the scroll, I'll take Mizuki."

He pouted. "That sucks. I wanted to drop him a few times on the way."

"That isnt how we treat suspected traitors, Naruto."

"Suspected? The guy literally ran off with a scroll like ten minutes ago. I bet half the village saw him."

"Either way, we dont treat _anyone_ that way."

"Even if he's an asshole?"

Iruka struggled to keep from smiling. "Even then. Treat others with dignity and respect, even if you think they're an asshole. Or I would have dropped you in the street about a million times by now."

He nodded in acceptance. It made sense. Treat others the way you want to be treated... Wait a minute...

"Oy! What are you trying to imply?!"

Iruka bailed, taking off with the bound Mizuki and a laugh. "Come on, Naruto. Keep up. We need to call off the search party."

The return trip was longer than his mad dash following Mizuki, they were weighed down and Iruka was going slower for his benefit. Not that he needed it, but his sensei didnt know that and Naruto felt touched at the gesture anyway.

When they reached the bright red Hokage Tower Naruto felt his earlier unease creep back in.

"Are you alright, Naruto?"

He gave a shaky smile. "Awesome, as always."

Iruka laid a hand on his shoulder. "Dont worry, you arent in any trouble. Lord Hokage will probably reward you for your help. You achieved a great thing today, Naruto."

Not the thing I _wanted to_ achieve today.

The secretary waves us in without a word, frowning slightly. She was still upset with me after I had gotten her to pass along a fresh bowl of ramen to Gramps years back. A fresh bowl that was spiked with a half bottle of laxative.

Inside the office, Gramps was seated behind his desk with a pipe in mouth. Stacks of paper were piled on either side on the desk, framing the old man like a window. I dont remember _ever_ seeing the man do paperwork and I had been in here more times than I could count.

"Report."

Iruka stood straighter. "Chunin, Iruka Umino ID35003. Reporting in regards to immediate action search and detain of suspected traitor, Chunin Mizuki."

"You're always so by the book, Iruka. What happened? And why is Naruto with you?"

"Naruto Uzumaki is the one who captured Mizuki and retrieved the scroll, sir."

Gramps nearly dropped his pipe. "Really? You mean he helped you defeat Mizuki?"

"No, by the time I arrived Mizuki had already been bound and injured. From what I can tell Naruto tracked and defeated Mizuki alone."

Gramps smiled proudly and Naruto couldnt help the warm feeling that welled up as a consequence.

"That is most impressive. And I take it the scroll wasnt harmed in _any_ way?"

Iruka nodded meaningfully, tapping him to place the scroll on the paper covered desk. "All right then. I dont think this could have been resolved any better than it has. You're dismissed. Naruto, stay behind."

Iruka grabbed his shoulder. "I'll wait for you at the entrance. We can get some ramen together."

"Maybe another time, Iruka sensei. I want to talk with gramps for a while. "

Iruka nodded and smiled sympathetically, seeming to take Naruto's dismissal as him not being over the graduation flop.

When the door closed lightly Naruto stood silent. Shame kept his head bowed, the beginning of tears being held in the corner of his eyes. Naruto's first memories were of the old man smiling down at him in an amused fashion, pipe in hand and puffing away like a steamboat filling his nose with the acrid smell of tobacco.

Probably at another of his silly calls for attention. Jiji had always been there, a steadfast and loving pillar of support through it all. His entrance into the academy, his subsequent falling out with the orphanage matron, failed exams and the pain of childhood friends not made.

He had done things not strictly right before, but Naruto had never felt as much of a failure as he did now.

"Naruto... Whats the matter? What's got you so upset?" Jiji's concerned voice was just too much, and he burst into tears.

"I- I- I cant do it anymore, Gramps! Th-this was my third time failing, I c-cant go back there! N-nobody wants me there, nobody wants to help me and I try so hard! I try so hard..." Naruto sobbed and coughed, shoulders shaking with emotion

"I try so hard... But things never seem to go my way... I want to be a ninja so bad! But-"Arms wrapped around him and Naruto was clenched tightly to an old but still surprising firm chest.

"Im sorry. I'm so sorry that I couldn't look out for you, Naruto." He sobbed for a few minutes more, then felt mortified at the whole situation and released the hug. Face blushing with embarrassment he wiped his tears away, wishing he could disappear.

When he had collected himself the third hokage was seated comfortably in his chair, his face impassive, acting for all the world as if nothing had just happened. "Naruto, do you know why the three academy jutsu are required for graduating?"

He shook his head.

"When the Shodaime first created the academy it was decided that the foundation of successful ninja were the abilities to disguise oneself perfectly for infiltration missions, to avoid fatal attacks and create clones to disorient the enemy." here the old man took a deep drag on his pipe "This is what our village looks to create, the type of ninja who could infiltrate a secure environment, assassinate the target then escape unharmed. And in the generations that have passed through the academy ever since Konoha has become the masters of infiltration and capture."

Gramps waved his arms, gesturing to the office and the village behind him.

"This is our legacy... And whilst I as the hokage have the power to instate you as a ninja without having to see a clone jutsu performed I believe you can learn this jutsu, and if you know it by the day of orientation I wouldn't even need to pull rank."

Naruto sucked in a breath. "But, you know Jiji, I don't think I'll be able to do the clone. Owl said that it would be impossible for me to ever have good chakra control. He said that I have too much chakra and it's growing too fast for me to catch up, and I've been practicing control exercises every day for the last two years. So I wont be able to learn the bunshin anyway. No matter how hard I try it just gets more difficult for me to do it."

The Third Hokage pulled his hat down to shadow his face.

"Of course... You know, even though having a clone jutsu is a requirement it doesn't have to be the standard academy bunshin. There are dozens of clone jutsu. Though, it will be all but impossible for an academy student to have it taught to them. Its illegal for a registered ninja to pass on ninja techniques to a civilian, after all."

Hope soared. "I'll learn it then, no matter what! Even if I have to look through every book in the library or ask every ninja in the village I'll have it down by the orientation, no problem. Believe it!"

"... You do know there are no jutsu in the library, right?" said Gramps

Naruto scratched his head "W-well, of course I do! I'm not stupid, you know!"

"Hey Naruto, you know the forbidden scroll has a clone jutsu listed as the first technique?" The same scroll that now lay on the hokage's desk, haphazardly tossed between piles of paperwork and that he had just personally carried for miles.

"Just something I thought you might find interesting. Now then, I'll be turning around to have a smoke. You're a few decades early to know this, Naruto, but there's nothing quite like having a good smoke and looking at an even better view. Now, as you point out so often Naruto I am a rather old man, and old men can be forgiven for having rather poor hearing so don't go poking about while my back is turned, you hear?"

Then jiji gave a barely discernable wink and turned in his office chair, looking down at the village below and humming a jaunty old tune that Naruto had heard sung hundreds of times before.

Naruto reached out with shaky hands, grin already replacing a frown, excitement replacing heartache. In his excitement he fumbled for a bit with the scroll and Gramps hummed louder. Inside the scroll the instructions were succinct, written in a style that had him envious. All neat lines and smooth curves of a slightly dated kanji.

He memorised the instructions and rehearsed the handsign- there was only one required, thankfully- before rolling it back up to be stashed away, for purposes unknown.

* * *

Shikimaru Nara was rather close friends with Naruto Uzumaki. Ever since the troublesome blond had decided to grow a brain after their first _academy tournament_ he had felt a strong kinship with Naruto. They had something in common, then. Something not even his best friend Choji did. Both he and Naruto saw things differently than the others.

So it had sucked when Naruto was made to fail the final exam.

He had wanted to comfort his friend, but despite coming off as an end-level extrovert there were moments when even Naruto needed time alone. Naruto needed space, and until he thought the guy was over it Shikimaru would let him be.

Then why was it that Naruto had, just moments before, sauntered into the room with a spring in his step and foxy grin on his face?

And why did he have a forehead-protector?

"Idiot, what do you think you're doing here? This room is for graduates, not useless dropouts like you!"

Sakura Haruno, a female howler monkey with pink hair and near-perfect test scores, was not on the friendliest of terms with Naruto. Naruto had once, for a very short time nursed a mean crush on the girl. That crush was swiftly crushed when the girl, mimicking the behaviour of her class idol-slash-love interest had proceeded to spout taunts and belittlement. That Naruto seemed to have a closer relationship with the Last Uchiha then Sakura had didnt earn him any friendship points either.

Naruto, for his part, ignored her completely and walked to his usual spot. "Yo Shika. Whats up?" He said, beaming.

Shikikaru sighed. "Hey Naruto. I wont even ask how you got that head protector. Its legit, right?"

Naruto pretended to look affronted. He failed so miserably it came off as constipation. "Of course it is! Who do you think I am, that cheating Uchiha bitch or the mangy mutt?"

The ' _cheating Uchiha Bitch',_ Shikimaru had noticed, had become very attentive as soon as Naruto walked through the door despite seeming vaguely miserable before. She was so obvious.

Ignoring Kiba's _witty_ threats and comebacks, he fixed Naruto with a mischievous grin. "You know what this means, right?"

Already leaning over a fresh scroll and dipping his caligraphy brush in a point of ink, Naruto hummed in recognition. "That I am awesome."

"You arent, and that wasnt what I was referring to. Since you passed legally they would have had to adjust your end of year score. You must have learned the clone technique, right?"

He nodded slightly.

"That means you're the shinobi of the year."

That got his attention.

"Oh yeah, looks like Naruto Uzumaki is right where he belongs- first place."

Shikimaru grinned just a bit wider. "I never said you were in first place. I said you were the number one _shinobi_ in the class. Sasuke is the number one _kunoichi and rookie of the year_."

Naruto swore. "Fuck. She's going to be unbearable. This is the worst day of my life."

Shikimaru laughed. "It gets even better."

"How, Shikimaru? Is my assigned sensei a retard? Am I going to be stabbed on the way home? Is Ichiraku's going to burn down? Because the only thing worse than a smug Sasuke is that last thing, trust me."

Naruto looked completely serious.

"Oh? How about this then: the top _kunoichi_ and _shinobi_ of the year have been placed on the same team every year since the Academy was founded."

Naruto's eyes widened in terror. Just for the sake of digging it in a bit deeper, Shikimaru continued slowly. "That means, of course, you and Sasuke will be placed on the same team. How great is that?"

Naruto slumped. "Not great, not great at all. This is bullshit, dattebayo..."

Choji would arrive fifteen minutes later, after finishing off his usual early bird special at Kikyou's (tx) to see a depressed Naruto drawing the same circle over and over with a dry brush and defeated look.

"Hey Shika, Naru. Looks like you passed after all."

"Choji. How was breakfast?"

"Great as always. Whats wrong with him?" He asked, gesturing to the muttering blonde.

"Just realized that he'll be on the same team as Sasuke, poor bastard."

"Oh, that sucks. Bet you fifty ryo she tries to kill him with a _missed_ fireball technique their first time out the village."

"No way. Im not stupid enough to bet against something as sure as that."


End file.
